


Soulmarks

by oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, as a treat, we're giving tim one good thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 34,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27609314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol/pseuds/oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol
Summary: Soulmate Au where things that people love/hate appear tattooed on their soulmate’s body. If they love it it’ll be on their front, and if they hate it it’ll appear on their back. The more important it is the closer it is to the heart. They can also move around/disappear over time.Technically not really complete. I stopped early, but it stops at the end of an arc and on a happy point. I might pick this story up again later on, I don't know.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 131
Kudos: 510





	1. Chapter 1

Tim Drake is two years old when he receives his first soulmarks. There are two: the names Sabine Cheng and Tom Dupain are found in elegant script over his heart.

He was alone when he’d found it, attempting to learn how to button up his shirt, and they’d sprung from his skin. He didn’t bother crying. He’d long since lost hope that someone would come for him if he did.

Instead, he’d waited for a maid to come into the room on her rounds and called her over.

The woman had smiled kindly as she explained soulmarks. How they were actually a good thing. How they meant that he was going to fall in love one day and one day he could get married! Like his mommy and daddy!

He’d seen how his mom and dad were sometimes. He wasn’t all that impressed.

Tim decided that the whole ‘soulmate’ thing could wait. He had a shirt to learn how to button.

~

On the other side of the world, however, Marinette Dupain Cheng is born without any tattoos on her body. Her parents don’t think much of it. She was just older than her soulmate, then. Or maybe she didn’t have one. That was fine.

But then, three years later, a computer appeared over her heart.

Marinette didn’t even notice until she was pulling off her shirt for a bath.

She hadn’t been shocked or scared like Tim had been, instead she’d beamed and waddled over to her mother with the widest grin on her face.

“Maman! Maman! Look! I have a soulmark!”

Sabine had smiled and turned to look but, much to Marinette’s confusion, it quickly morphed into an anxious expression.

Then her mother brought the smile back and she figured it must have been her imagination. The woman had reached out to ruffle her hair.

Marinette had finished getting ready and gotten in the bath, and her mother looked her over for a soulmark as she cleaned her. But there wasn’t one. There wasn’t one on her back and, outside of the one that had just formed, there wasn’t one on her front.

Then what was going on? Even abused kids tended to have their parent’s names somewhere on their bodies. But there was nothing.

The next guess was that her soulmate’s parents were dead. Usually, orphans had their housemates’ names on them, so the kid would have to be on the streets. Could a street kid really get enough access to a computer that it appears over their heart?

Sabine finished toweling off her daughter and pressed a kiss to her head after pulling her shirt on.

“Want to watch Pere bake some?”

The little girl’s eyes lit up and she nodded.

~

Whoever Tim’s soulmate was, they were really good at making friends. His chest was littered with names by the end of their first year of school.

And then there was one name on his back, right over his heart: Chloe Bourgeois. He frowned when he saw it.

For the first time since his first soulmark had appeared, he found himself curious about what was going on.

He pulled out his computer and looked up the name, not expecting to find much.

But, it turned out he did. After running an article through google translate (which didn’t work great) he managed to gather that she was the daughter of the mayor of Paris.

So... his soulmate was French.

(Unless they just had a vendetta against a random 3-year-old. Unlikely, though.)

He pulled up a new tab. It never hurt to learn a new language.

~

Their likes and dislikes slowly cropped up on their bodies as time went on.

Tim had smiled despite himself when he saw the pictures cropping up. A whisk was found on his shoulder, and then a video game console popped up on his stomach, and then a sewing needle and buttons could be seen under their parent’s names. On his back, he could find what appeared to be homework and broccoli. Whoever his soulmate was, their life seemed quaint and pleasant.

Marinette had been happy to see all the little things popping up over herself as well. A circus tent on the sole of her foot, a skateboard on her neck, a camera by the computer. On her back, she could see what looked like playing cards. She thought all their hobbies sounded cute (if a bit random). She was just concerned about the distinct lack of names on her body; she hoped that they were at least getting enough social interaction.

~

When she was twelve, it finally happened: a name appeared!

She stared at the script that had displaced the computer and her eyebrows knit together.

Batman.

Maybe a pet’s name? Human names tended to give a first and last name, so...

She typed it into her phone to try and translate it to French and her eyes widened when it actually gave information on someone in this place called Gotham.

A vigilante?

She laid back in her bed and frowned to herself.

In order for a person to show up as a name, there had to be a personal connection. If there wasn’t, like a celebrity crush, it would show up as a picture. But this was text, so…

Well, she hoped that her soulmate was safe.

Over time, more names appeared. They were all just as odd.

Nightwing?

Batgirl?

A simple google search showed they were vigilantes, too. She frowned slightly.

As long as they were okay, she supposed she should just be happy that they were talking to good people.

Besides, being friends with vigilantes seemed kind of cool. She could understand the appeal. She wished that Paris had something like that.

~

When he was fifteen a polka-dotted yoyo appeared over his heart, displacing their family’s names slightly. He stared at the yoyo for a minute in the mirror and then snickered to himself.

“Damn. They must really like yoyos.”

He laughed to himself and glanced at his back to see if anything changed, and was surprised to find that Chloe’s name had been moved away to make room for…

Was that a butterfly?

“And hate butterflies, apparently.”

~

She stared at the tiny bird over her heart.

Computers, skateboards, circuses, photography, and… birdwatching?

Whoever her soulmate was, their hobbies had range.

~

Tim had been changing out of his Robin costume when the names started disappearing.

Panic filled him. He’d heard before that, when your soulmate dies, your tattoos start to disappear.

But a few stayed, as did their hobbies.

He looked over the remaining names.

Their parents were still there, right next to the yoyo. Their family life was okay…

He stared at the other name and his eyebrows knit together.

Who names their kid Chat Noir?

He shook his head slightly. Maybe his soulmate had a black cat and wasn’t good at naming things.

Tim checked his back, mostly out of habit more than anything, and frowned to himself.

The butterfly had disappeared, and in its place were two names:

Lila Rossi and Hawkmoth.

~

She grinned as she twirled around in the dress she’d made. She was rather proud of it, it had a nice red and black color scheme.

She started taking it off, only to realize something.

Everything was gone.

She looked over her skin, running her fingers over where all the tiny tattoos had once been and felt tears form in her eyes.

Her soulmate was…

And then, slowly but surely, something appeared on her chest.

She wiped her eyes and looked at it, only to frown.

A gag gun that said ‘BANG’.

Nerves rattled around inside her. Something was definitely wrong, she could tell. But how could she fix it?

Maybe she could convince Master Fu to give her the horse miraculous? She could drop into Gotham as Ladybug for a little while and check up on them? Sure, she had no idea who her soulmate was, but she knew who they hung out with. She should at least make sure they’re okay.

A few hours later she was dumped unceremoniously onto a Gotham rooftop.

She looked up at the portal Master Fu had dropped her through and made a rude hand gesture, then pushed herself to her feet. She walked to the edge of the roof, dusting herself off as she went, and looked over the side.

Wow, this place definitely looked like the most dangerous city in the world. She could see a guy holding a gun while walking an old lady across the street it was so bad.

She pulled out her phone and looked up a picture of the vigilantes that she’d seen on her chest. Nightwing… Batgirl… Batman…

Man, did they have to wear such dark colors? It was night! How dare they do the smart thing and make it hard to see them!

Fine. Time to wonder around and pray, she supposed.

She had been considering detransforming and seeing if she could buy a coffee when she heard a click behind her head.

Ah. Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

She sighed and rested her hands on her hips, her fingers carefully detaching her yoyo.  
They were giving her orders, she could tell from their tone, but she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. She barely spoke English outside of a few vague lessons she’d had when she was a kid, and they were talking too fast for her to catch a single word.

“You know, I’d love to do that, but I don’t speak English.”

The person paused at this, and then they switched to fluent French: “Oh, sorry. Turn around slowly and don’t make any sudden moves.”

She slowly turned around, resting her hands behind her back. His gun lowered slightly to point at her legs and she let herself relax a little bit. A shot would be absolutely terrible, but at least he wasn’t actively trying to kill her.

She flashed Nightwing a bright smile. “Why, hello, sir!”

He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I’m Ladybug...” They didn’t know who she was, so she didn’t have to hide her yoyo. She pulled it out from behind her back and started doing tricks with it to let out some of her nervous energy. “And, well, I’m here because I think my soulmate is in trouble. Apparently you, Batman, and Batgirl all know them.”

Nightwing’s eyebrows disappeared behind his bangs. “Uh… can you prove that?”

“See, the problem with that is most of my soulmarks have disappeared for them. All of them, actually.”

“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I guess I’ll explain it to you…”

“Oh! No, they’re not dead! I thought they were, but then a new soulmark appeared and it’s… weird? Weirder than their normal ones, at least...”

She trailed off. Her eyes narrowed slightly. He’d certainly phrased the ‘I’ll explain it to you’ thing oddly, it was almost as if there was someone else there that she didn’t know about.

Her eyes searched the area for a sign of movement as she continued: “I don’t know if you can make sense of it. It’s a gun, but it’s one of those fake ones with the little flags that say ‘BANG’ you see in cartoons…”

Her eyes spotted a flickering in the shadows and she cringed mentally. Damn, she hated it when she was right. Whoever they were, she couldn’t see a glint of metal. So it was probably safe to assume they didn’t have a weapon out --.

“Where was it?”

She pulled her attention back to Nightwing. “Over my heart. Do you know what it means?”

He obviously knew, but he seemed hesitant to say anything. This really didn’t help her anxiety about the situation. He’d been prepared to tell her that her soulmate was dead, so just how bad could this be?

He opened his mouth to tell her, but he was cut off as a gun went off a few blocks away.

Listen, she wasn’t proud of it. But she was anxious... and it was at least two-on-one... and he’d had a gun pointed at her. She latched her yoyo around his wrist.

His eyes found their way to the polka-dotted yoyo and shock flickered across his face. “You’re-- oh sh --!”

She threw him to the next building without thinking and brought her hands up to her mouth as he crashed into a wall. Oops. He was a human.

She wheeled around to find Batgirl and held up her hands with a weak smile. What was the English word? “Sor-ree,” she said. She pointed the woman in the direction of the gunshot. “Can you? I’ll fix ‘im.”

Batgirl was apparently stunned enough by what Marinette had said that she complied.

She quickly hopped over to where Nightwing was and cringed as she summoned her lucky charm. The first thing she thought of popped into her hand: a computer mouse. “Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry,” she mumbled.

He could only groan in response.

“Miraculous Ladybug,” she said.

He was enveloped in ladybugs and, when they cleared, he was patting himself with a shocked expression. “What the-- how did-- why--?”

“I really didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear. Are you alright?”

“I’m… fine, apparently,” he assured her. He slowly pushed himself to his feet and gave her a weak smile. “Well… that was certainly one way to meet the inlaws.”

“HUH?”

~

She let them escort her, blindfolded, to the Batcave.

Did she think it was stupid and unnecessary? Yes, she was already lost enough without the whole blindfold thing. Did she care? No, if this is what it would take to figure out if her soulmate was okay she would do it.

The blindfold was whipped off her face and a gasp left her lips.

“Oh, I need to get me one of these.”

Nightwing laughed and Marinette felt her face warm. She’d meant to be quieter.

She was allowed to wander around while Nightwing explained the situation to Batman and Batgirl. She tried not to laugh at all the names on plaques starting with ‘Bat’. She wondered if Nightwing was actually called BatNightwing.

“Ladybug!” Called possibly-BatNightwing.

She smiled awkwardly as she walked over. She perched herself on a railing.

Batman handed her a tiny device and she raised her eyebrows.

“It’ll translate everything so we can all speak in our native languages,” he explained calmly.

She nodded and placed it in her ear and pressed on. Lights flickered in front of her eyes and she stared at the interface in front of her with a stunned expression.

She reached up and selected her language and then waved for them to go ahead.

“Your soulmate is Tim Drake. He went missing on patrols about three weeks ago,” explained Batman.

Her eyes widened at the text in front of her and she pulled out her yoyo again. Her soulmate was a vigilante? You’d think she know about it from her soulmarks...

“What was his hero name?”

Nightwing shook his head. “Vigilante, not hero. And Robin.”

She hit herself in the face with her yoyo. Ah, so he wasn’t an avid birdwatcher, he was a bird-themed vigilante. She supposed that did make sense, considering her chosen career path.

Batgirl crossed her arms over her chest. “And you swear it’s a gag gun?”

“Do I have a reason to lie?”

Batgirl shrugged a little bit.

Batman seemed to think for a minute before sighing. “She’s a child, we can’t tell her this.”

“A child who launched that guy --” she jabbed a finger towards Nightwing “-- across some rooftops.” She smiled brightly. “So, how about we start talking, please?”

Batman sighed again. “No need for threats. We think he’s been captured by Joker.”

“And Joker is…?”

“A Rogue -- or I guess you would know of him as a criminal or villain. He’s pretty big here,” explained Batgirl.

She nodded slowly. That explained the deck of cards that had been on her back since she was a child. She started messing with her yoyo again.

“So, he was captured by Joker and…?”

Everyone looked at the oldest to explain, and Batman shook his head slightly. “He’s seemed to have lost his identity if everything has disappeared.”

She thought about this for a minute and her face paled. What could Joker have done to him for him to lose his identity? She found herself hoping he’d just gotten hit too hard on the head once and lost his memory. That was the best-case scenario.

Somehow, she doubted it.

“Right, so how do we save him?”

~

The Batmobile was… cramped.

The thing was huge, but there was very little actual room to sit for anyone besides Batman. Nightwing joked that it was almost as if he didn’t want anyone else in there.

In the end, Marinette got to sit in the passenger’s seat while Nightwing and Batgirl cursed their father out from the roof of the car. Sure, they were going slower than usual so no one would fall off and die, but it couldn’t be fun. She messed with her summoned yoyo (yes, she summoned a yoyo with her yoyo, what of it?) as she listened in to make sure they didn’t fall.

All too soon and yet far too late, they stopped at the gates to Arkham Asylum. She and Batman climbed out and helped the others down.

They all hopped the fence and Marinette sent a cheeky grin as she slipped through the bars.

Nightwing sighed. “I wish I was that tiny again.”

She gave a quiet laugh.

Everyone’s slight smiles dropped off their faces as they entered the asylum.

A shiver ran through her at the singing that floated through the mostly abandoned building. Everyone exchanged glances and then Nightwing and Batgirl split off.

She and Batman made their way through the halls, following the sound. She fought the temptation to curl in on herself or run away.

Batman sent her a look, a ‘stay back’, and then burst through the door.

Marinette slowly inched around the door as well, looking for cover. The place looked like Picasso had tried to make a house. There were walls where there shouldn’t be and an extra floor that just jutted out from the wall. Typical household items were placed around at random. It felt warped and… wrong.

The woman cut herself off and set a vase of flowers on the table. She turned around and looked up at the chair. “Puddin’, company!”

Marinette took the chance to dive under the table.

Her eyes landed on a… was that a bazooka? She’d never seen one in person before, and being so close to it made her anxious. She scooted as far away from it as she could. Her fingers pulled up the tablecloth slightly and she ducked down to see what was going on.

The man in the chair turned around to look and then smiled. “Hello there,” he said, stepping down. “Welcome to our happy abode!”

Joker and the woman embraced each other.

Batman didn’t humor them. “Where’s Robin?”

The couple looked at each other with mock confusion. “Robin? There’s no Robin here!”

“Maybe he means our little J!”

“Of course!” Joker snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

They both looked at a blue curtain and Batman scowled as he strode towards it.

The woman giggled and reached under the table, her hand poking Marinette’s face. She made a quiet sound in the back of her throat and continued on, grabbing the bazooka. “Uh-uh! No peeking!”

Marinette’s eyes widened in horror as she pointed it at Batman but, before she could react, she pulled the trigger.

Ribbon wrapped around him.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Mommy’s little helper!” Said the woman brightly.

Joker pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You know, bats, we’ve been doing this little runaround of ours for years. It’s been loads of laughs, but the sad fact is…” He stepped towards the curtain. “None of us are getting any younger.”

“That old clock’s a-tickin!”

“Quite right, poo. And Harley and I were thinking it was time to start a family. Add a Joker Jr. to our merry brood.”

“But rather than go through all the joy of childbirth, we decided to adopt.”

“We couldn’t do it legally, but then we remembered you always had a few spare kids hanging around!”

Harley beamed and suddenly grabbed one of Marinette’s pigtails. A curse slipped from her lips as she was pulled out from under the table. “Whoops! There’s another one!”

“A surplus, really!” Joker grinned more widely than ever. “So we borrowed one.”

He pulled back the curtain with a dramatic flourish to reveal… an operating table?

She looked at the person on the table and felt bile rise in her throat. Their skin was blotchy white and paper-like from bleach treatments. Their eyes were unblinking and nearly pupil-less. The smile on their face was so wide that it had to have been stretched somehow.

“He needed a little molding, of course. What kid doesn’t? But, in time, we came to love him as our own. Say hello, J.J.”

The person started to laugh. The kind of laugh someone makes when they’re trying their hardest not to cry. They hopped down and laughed harder, their arms clutching their stomach as a few stray tears slid down his face.


	3. Chapter 3

After what felt like years, J.J. stopped laughing.

Joker, on the other hand, was laughing like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. Even as Batman broke free and threw a knife at his head, even as he was sprinting away from the vigilante, he wouldn’t stop. He certainly had a lot to laugh about, he’d won before everyone had even got there. No matter how terribly the vigilantes won that night, there was nothing they could do to fix what had happened to Robin.

Marinette pulled her head from Harley’s grip and locked eyes with Batgirl. 

Batgirl swung down and crashed into Harley, sending them both flying.

Marinette touched her scalp where a chunk had been torn out of her hair.

Nightwing touched down next to her. “Are you alright?”

She nodded slightly and let her hand drop.

“That’s good. I’m glad. Get Tim out of this environment for us, please.”

She nodded and sent him a wave. “If we live I’m teaching you slang! You sound like a textbook!”

“Don’t say ‘if’!”

She rolled her eyes. Chat Noir would love this guy.

Her yoyo buzzed as her partner called her. Speaking of…

She picked it up and pulled it open, and Chat managed to get out a “M’lady!”, then she snapped it shut. She had problems to deal with outside of missing their normal meeting time for patrols.

Her gaze found its way to Tim and she hesitated.

They’d both been doing vigilante-work for about the same amount of time, if she was going off of when she’d gotten her soulmark, but she guessed that he’d had training beforehand. His fighting would likely be more polished.

On top of that, she’d be pulling whatever punches she did manage to land. He was a human and, when she was wearing the suit, she wasn’t. She didn’t know how much damage she could do if she really tried, but after the Nightwing fiasco earlier that night she wasn’t about to try and find out.

She would have to hope that it wouldn’t turn into a straight fight.

“Tim…” she said softly.

He was staring at her yoyo.

She fastened it back to her belt. She’d thought a lot about what she’d say if she ever met her soulmate over the years, but all the dumb pickup lines and polite questions she’d thought up didn’t exactly fit the situation she was currently in.

“I don’t know what they put you through... but it’s over now, okay? I’m going to take you home, okay?”

He looked at her blankly.

She stepped towards him carefully, her hands up in a kind of surrender. She didn’t know what to say. She was only fourteen, why was she expected to know what to do? Fuck, she didn’t even know if he spoke French, or if he could hear what she was saying at all.

She pulled a pleasant smile to her face as she neared him. “Let’s go...” She hesitated as she tried to recall the English word. “‘ome?”

Marinette held out her hand.

He stared at the outstretched hand for a few seconds, then looked back at her. He slowly reached out and took her hand.

And then he pulled.

She cursed as she was thrown off-balance. A knee slammed into her stomach and she groaned.

Marinette hooked her arm over his back and pushed down, looking for one of the pressure points she’d been taught.

His legs swept hers out from under her and she hit the ground with a dull thud, only barely managing to roll out of the way as his foot came after her.

She flipped to her feet and regarded him carefully as he advanced on her. She couldn’t fight him; it wouldn’t work out in her favor, win or lose. She couldn’t talk it out with him. What else was --?

Her yoyo buzzed again and she winced as she pulled it out. She flipped it open. “Not right now, Chat!” She hissed, then closed it again.

Well, since she had her yoyo out...

She sent Tim a tiny wink before hooking her yoyo around a pipe overhead and swinging herself to the second floor. She didn’t waste a second, ducking for cover behind a pile of dusty boxes labeled ‘props’.

She needed a plan! She was known for her plans! She just needed to think of one!

He climbed up. His feet creaked on the old floorboards as he searched for her. She brought her hands to her mouth to muffle her breathing as he passed by her boxes. He slowly continued on --.

Her yoyo buzzed.

His footsteps stopped.

The box above her head splintered and she squeaked, her hands coming up to shield her face as wood and plastic props rained down on her. She abandoned her hiding spot, using the dust as cover as she opened the yoyo.

“This better be really important, Chaton!” She hissed, glancing back and cringing as she saw Tim pick up Harley’s abandoned bazooka.

She dove under the table for the second time that night and looked down at the screen.

Chat looked incredulous. “You mean you don’t see Bona-parts?”

“No, obviously not.”

“Where are you?”

“In America, fighting my soulmate.”

Chat Noir looked concerned.

She shrugged and lifted up the edge of the tablecloth to show him what Tim looked like, she figured it was pretty self-explanatory, only to find he was right in front of her. A scream slipped from her lips as she quickly fell back and scrambled out the other side.

Ribbons streamed past her face and she squeaked, ducking out a door and running down the hallway.

“Anyways, I won’t be there for a while, so you’re going to have to stall.”

“I’ve been stalling for two hours! He’s almost beheaded every important person in Paris!”

She ducked into the stairwell and jumped down a flight. There, that was some good distance… She looked back at Chat. “Get Rena Rouge and Carapace. Hell, get Chloe if you have to!”

“Chloe is dead! And, if we don’t do something quick, Rogue and Carapace are next.”

Marinette cursed again. Great. She weighed her options.

Option one: stay and finally find out what happens when an akuma gets what they wanted, or let Chat Noir beat them without her and have every single major political or economic figure die because she can’t fix the damages of a fight she wasn’t involved in.

Option two: somehow take Tim back to Paris, pray he didn’t get akumatized the moment Hawkmoth finds out about him, and fight both him and Bona-parts at the same time.

Or option three: leave Tim here for the bats to deal with if -- when -- they won.

She sighed, listening to her soulmate kicking open doors. He was getting closer and closer…

“Get Master Fu to open a portal.”

They’d be losing their numbers advantage, but it would at least be three-on-three. Hopefully, that would be enough for them to win.

A portal opened in front of her and she sighed, glancing back at the top of the stairs...

Only for her eyes to widen as Tim launched himself at her. He crashed into her and sent them both flying.

They fell through the portal together.


	4. Chapter 4

She tumbled through and cursed as they crashed onto the mats.

Chat gave a yelp of surprise.

She didn’t pay him any mind, couldn’t really. She kept her eyes on Tim. He was leaning over her, a pin between his fingers. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it couldn’t be good as he moved to stab her with it. She kicked out against him as hard as she could.

Her soulmate went flying into the wall and she winced as it cracked around him. He slid to the ground slowly and didn’t move.

Fuck.

She walked over and pressed her fingers to his neck, sighing in relief when she felt his pulse was still there. Good, he was just knocked out, then.

But that wouldn’t last long. She quickly summoned some handcuffs. She carried him outside and cuffed him to the nearest bike rack.

She dropped down next to him and allowed herself a moment to just breathe. The past few hours had been a lot, she needed a minute.

Her eyes fluttered shut.

Just one minute…

Chat nudged her with his foot.

She peeked an eye open.

He leaned against his baton and gave her a tense smile. “Hey, so, I’d love to let you have a breather and all but our friends are kinda about to get beheaded.”

Marinette sighed and pushed herself to her feet slowly. “Right. I’d forgotten about that.”

“About the beheading --?!”

“Yeah.” She stretched. “Right, who are Bona-parts targets?”

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Right now he’s going after my father and me.”

“You’re all that’s left? I was only gone a few hours!”

He shrugged. “All the soldiers helped.”

“Soldiers?!”

“Yeah. He’s turned pretty much every non-rich person he’s come across into soldiers to find people.”

She looked around and a frown formed on her face. “Then… where are they?”

He hesitated. “They’re… attending an execution.”

She nodded slightly and looked for the guardian for guidance, only to wince when she couldn’t find him. “Where’s Master Fu?”

“Soldier-ized.”

“Great. This day couldn’t get any better.” She sighed. “At least the whole problem with my soulmate is over with. We can focus on the akuma.”

“Ye --.” Chat glanced over her shoulder and winced. “Um, Nette?”

She shook her head.

“But --.”

“It’s over with.”

He started to point and she shoved his hand down.

“I’m not turning to look at it. It’s over with.”

But, eventually, she turned around and a groan slipped from her lips.

Tim had broken out of the handcuffs.

Of course he knew escapology. Amazing! And of course he didn’t feel strongly enough about it either way for it to show up as a soulmark to warn her. Great! And of course he chose this time, while they were in Paris and he could get akumatized at any moment, to disappear instead of attacking them head-on. Perfect!

She kicked the bike rack.

~

They perched on a rooftop by the park.

The Ladybug and Chat Noir statue was buried under bodies.

In the center, the fountain was overflowing with blood. It spilled over onto the concrete, washing over the feet of the white-clad soldiers.

As she watched, the crowd parted. A thoroughly beaten Alya and Nino were dragged to the center. They weren’t moving. She felt like throwing up. Even if they weren’t friends anymore, she didn’t want them to die. Especially not like this.

Bona-parts paraded his captives through the square before stopping at the fountain.

Marinette messed with her yoyo, looking around anxiously for something to do. If she didn’t come up with a plan quickly Alya and Nino would be beheaded and Hawkmoth would be given two miraculi.

Her mind couldn’t really concentrate on the problem at hand, though, because she kept worrying that Tim would jump out of the shadows and add to everything.

Speaking of…

Her eyes landed on Tim, who was watching the chaos from a window sill. He hadn’t noticed Chat or Ladybug yet, and he looked almost… bored? He swung his legs as he surveyed the crowd. He seemed to be waiting for something.

She felt a hand rest on her shoulder and looked at Chat.

“I’ve… got a plan for how to hold back your soulmate.”

She gave a teasing smile because he looked far too serious for her liking. “Oh? Kitty’s got a plan for once?”

He nodded slowly and then mumbled it to her.

“That’s… how about we not do that,” said Marinette.

“Well, unless you can think of a better plan in the next ten seconds, we don’t have any other options.”

He nodded to the fountain and she cursed. Nino was being forced into a kneeling position before Bona-parts. When she looked back at Chat, he was already taking off his ring and slipping it into his pockets.

Adrien hopped down.

The akuma raised their ax to chop off Nino’s head… 

“HEY!”

Bona-parts looked up and regarded his second to last target for a moment before a wide smile stretched across his face. “Turning yourself in, Adrien Agreste?”

“Something like that!” He sent a wave with a bright smile.

A soldier reached for him and he dodged their touch.

The akuma’s smile dropped.

The soldiers began surging towards her partner.

Marinette winced and hopped down, pushing her way to the center. She just had to get to Nino and grab his miraculous. That was all.

She could hear Tim hit the ground on the other side of the square -- he had no need to be quiet -- and she fought the urge to scream. Why couldn’t Bona-parts have gone with red soldiers? She stuck out like a sore thumb. Beyond that, she was fighting the crowd while Tim could easily walk with it. Why couldn’t one thing go her way?

Her eyes flicked back to Adrien, who was ducking around guards’ arms and generally making as much noise as he physically could. At least he was keeping Bona-parts and his guards distracted, she didn’t need to fight off anyone else.

She reached the center, panting softly, and looked up into Tim’s eyes. He was standing between her and Nino.

Sure. Why not?

She already knew she couldn’t beat him in a straight fight. He clearly knew it, too, if the way he hadn’t yet gotten into a fighting position was any indication…

She charged him. He looked slightly surprised for a second before quickly ducking down and bracing himself for her attack.

He used her force against her, flipping her over his shoulder.

She hit the ground behind him and felt her ankle scream in protest at the way she’d landed, but she didn’t care. She continued running, letting her adrenaline carry her. She grabbed Nino’s unconscious body and ripped the miraculous from his wrist.

She attached it to her own and mumbled a quick, “Wayzz, Tikki, unify!”

She whipped around to where Tim was advancing on her and quickly created a barrier around him.

He stopped cold and her shoulders relaxed a little. His eyes darted around the green ball she’d put him in. Good, he shouldn’t be able to do anything in there and Hawkmoth wouldn’t be able to akumatize him if he noticed him. That problem was gone --.

Her soulmate ran into the edge of the ball and rolled a few feet before coming to a stop. He considered this for a while before stepping forward and pressing against the wall with all his weight. To his delight, it rolled in her direction.

Ah. Great. Giving him a giant hamster ball to crush her with wasn’t exactly the plan, but here she was.

He started rolling towards her, getting the hang of his new weapon far too quickly for her liking, and she prepared to leap to the side at the last second.

Adrien gave a scream of pain from the other side of the park.

She watched with horror as Adrien was pinned to the ground, his leg bent at an angle it definitely shouldn’t have been able to achieve.

And then she got rolled over.


	5. Chapter 5

The air left her lungs. Her suit was the only thing keeping her in one piece as he rolled over her.

Part of her just wanted to lay there and let him run her over again as she watched him come to a stop and start pushing his way back towards her, her entire body ached and screamed with every little movement, but she couldn’t let Chat’s sacrifice be in vain.

She pushed herself to her feet and watched Tim pick up speed. While he definitely had brute force on his side, his ability to make quick turns and stops was extremely limited.

Marinette jumped out of the way right before he could hit her again and he rolled right past, slamming into the white soldiers and toppling a huge group like bowling pins. He didn’t seem all that concerned with the bumps as he slowed to a stop and then started back in her direction again.

Hm…

She ducked through the crowds and grinned widely as Tim followed after her with no real regard for all the soldiers he was mowing down. They didn’t have magic suits to hold them together, so it affected them far more than her.

“HEY!” Yelled Bona-parts, who had finally noticed the commotion.

She sent him a cheeky wave and started in his direction.

The man was too smart to get bowled over, quickly dodging her/Tim’s attack, but she didn’t care about that as she knelt down and scooped Adrien up. She sent a wink as she ducked out of the park and began running down the streets, Tim on her tail and rapidly gaining speed.

She slipped down an alley a while away that was too small for Tim to fit through. She set Adrien down.

Her soulmate groaned in irritation and punched the forcefield. Bright green light threatened to blind her and when she looked back Tim had been thrown back so hard he’d rolled a few meters.

He looked down at his hand and she could practically see the gears turning in his head. There was a short moment where he didn’t seem to know what to do. Then he shook out his hand and got to his feet.

He stepped back for a running start and then crashed into the alley.

Marinette was horrified to find that the building crumbled a little with the force.

He backed up and started again.

She listened to the dull thumping of the force-field crashing against the corners of the buildings repeatedly. The buildings would eventually cave, but that was a problem for a few minutes from now.

She wanted to lay down, but she knew that if she would she wouldn’t be able to get up. Instead, she settled for leaning heavily against a wall and resting her head back.

After a few minutes, she finally managed to steady her breathing enough to speak: “You’re fucking stupid, you know that?”

“I think my plan worked,” he muttered, his face a bit pale as he pulled his broken leg to his chest. “Just… not how I intended.”

She shook her head slightly. “That’s literally the definition of a plan not working… but okay, sure.”

He sent her a slight glare and probably would have kicked her if either of their bodies could take it.

“Plagg, claws out,” he murmured, and there was a crunching sound as the suit forced his leg back into its normal shape. He pushed himself to his good foot and then slowly started applying pressure onto his bad one to get it used to holding his weight. “Well, we have…” He looked at the steadily crumbling wall as Tim ran into it again. “Around five minutes to plan before your soulmate makes this place cave in on top of us.”

She nodded and pulled out her yoyo. She messed with it anxiously as they thought.

She couldn’t come up with anything. Did it matter if she could, though? All the plans that she had employed that night had backfired spectacularly.

Ah, she could hear footsteps in the distance. They must have finished up Alya and Nino’s execution.

“They’re going to find us,” said Adrien.

She looked at Tim and cringed. He was right, unfortunately. A ball of pure light was hard to miss, and the sun was beginning to set. She may as well have had a neon sign over her head saying ‘Ladybug! Over here! Come get her!’

Her eyes found Adrien’s and she sent him a weak grin.

“Actually… they’re going to find me.”

~

She tore through the streets, Tim rolling after her.

She had considered trying to lose him through back streets and alleys but decided against it. Even if it was a pain to dodge his attacks every few seconds, he was useful for taking down the soldiers.

She grinned as she turned a corner and saw the first group of soldiers. She glanced back and saw Tim slowing and then restarting in her direction.

She stood still, watching both of them coming at her.

She vaulted over the force field and grinned as Tim bowled over the guards. He turned around and rolled over them again as he started back in her direction.

Good, they wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

She tried not to think about the fact that these were once people. After all, they were mindless zombies right now. She was putting them out of their misery.

Or, at least, she hoped.

But, since she could think of no other solutions, she continued using Tim to mow them down in droves.

As time went on, and the sky got darker, more and more soldiers started appearing, drawn by the light.

She could tell her soulmate was getting more and more frustrated as she dodged his attacks, but it wasn’t as if he could really change his strategy. There wasn’t much else he could do. He just had to hope she eventually tired herself out enough for him to land a hit.

And she was getting tired. And she could feel her injuries worsening the more strain she put on them. Her ladybug suit helped, but it could only do so much.

She was running out of time...

God, where was Bona-parts when you actually want to see him?

Oh. There he was. She reconsidered wanting to see him as her eyes found his blood-covered ax.

At least she knew where the akuma was.

She smiled and sent a wave to Bona-parts and then rolled to the side as Tim came past her.

The akuma dodged as well and stopped for a second to concentrate. She paused and looked around, waiting for the rumbling that accompanied the soldiers’ arrival…

But there was none.

“Where are they?”

She shrugged, trying not to let her relief show. “Would you like me to show you? I need to run from that guy anyway.”

“You do, do you?” He said thoughtfully.

“Try and use it against me if you want. Don’t think you have a way of pinning me down that won’t get you hurt, too, and my buddy here isn’t all that concerned with extra casualties.”

She saw Bona-parts take in the way that the green glow of the force field was somewhat muted and grimy. As if it were covered in a thin layer of paint.

“You killed them?”

She dodged another attack from Tim and shrugged. “I don’t think you’re one to talk.”

Bona-parts opened their mouth to respond and then whipped around, ax swinging. They missed Chat’s nose by centimeters.

Marinette cursed. There went that idea.

She pulled out her yoyo.

She glanced back at Tim and sighed. He was barreling towards them again. Fun.

Something clicked in her mind and she grinned as she gave Bona-parts a quick kick to the side. He scowled and turned his ax on her, swinging it --.

She jumped over his attack and he hit Tim’s forcefield. A beam of bright light forced her to look away momentarily.

She peeked her eyes open hesitantly.

Her soulmate had rolled an entire city block and was now lying unconscious in his bubble (or, at least, she hoped he was just unconscious, the kid had gone through enough).

Then her eyes found their way to Bona-parts. He was struggling to pull his ax out of where it had gotten stuck in a nearby building.

Chat grinned and pressed a finger to it. “Cataclysm.”

Marinette breathed a sigh of relief as she captured the akuma. Now all that was left was --.

Fuck. The lucky charm. She didn’t use her lucky charm at all during the battle…

Well, apparently it was a good thing that she’d summoned those handcuffs earlier after all.

She pulled them from her belt and smiled. “Miraculous Ladybug.”

Ladybugs swirled around everyone and she felt her bones mending under her suit. Cool, now she could actually take it off later without turning into mush.

She walked over to Tim and her eyes widened as he came into view. The ladybugs had helped him, too. His skin had been returned to a healthy shade and his hair was a glossy black.

Sure, it wouldn’t erase the memories of what had happened, but at least he wouldn’t have a constant reminder every time he looked in the mirror.

He curled up inside the bubble and rested his head inside his hands.

She looked away from her soulmate. She didn’t know if he was crying or just confused about why his likely concussion had disappeared, but it felt wrong to watch and find out.

Chat walked over and leaned against his baton as he smiled at her. “Well, Bona-parts is dealt with. Apparently, she worked at Amazon.”

Marinette nodded. “That explains it.”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

She watched Tim slowly start to stir and winced. She really did not want to do any more fighting right now…

“Think you can do a portal to the bottom of a staircase?”

“Yeah. Why were you in an abandoned building, anyways?”

“Long story. Wanna meet some American superher --? Oh, wait, no, vigilantes. They call themselves vigilantes over there.”

He grinned. “Are they too good to be heroes?”

“Too bad, apparently. Even though they don’t have the balls to kill anyone.”

“Losers.”

“Absolutely. Wanna meet them?”

“I’d love to.”

Kaalki opened a portal underneath the three of them and they found themselves back in Arkham.


	6. Chapter 6

When the door burst open, the two heroes were taking turns balancing on Tim’s hamster ball while he rolled around the tiny space, trying to knock them off.

Marinette’s foot slipped in her surprise and she tumbled to the ground. She pouted at Nightwing. “Damn it, I was so close to beating his time...”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Nette, I’ll count it as a tie.”

“Thanks, Chaton.”

Nightwing took in Chat. Then he took in Tim’s hamster ball. There was a moment where he just stared before he shrugged his shoulders and pressed a hand to his ear. “Right, I found them. Northwest stairwell.”

Marinette opened her mouth to translate for Adrien but, apparently, he didn’t need it: “At the bottom stairwell if it matters!” He yelled in English.

She frowned. “You speak English?”

“Among other things.”

She nodded slightly. “Nightwing, this is my partner…” She stopped herself, unsure whether he wanted to let a stranger know his name.

He grinned from where he was perched on a banister. “Adrien Agreste.”

He considered this for a minute before sighing. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough since she’s Tim’s soulmate. I’m Dick Grayson.”

Marinette and Adrien raised their eyebrows and looked at each other to confirm that, yes, he’d just said his name was Dick and they weren’t going insane.

“Uh… alright. I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

“They didn’t already know your name?”

“Didn’t really trust them before.”

“And what about this guy attacking you made you trust them?” Adrien teased.

She grinned. “You fight together once and you’re bonded for life.”

“You’re replacing me, M’lady? I’m wounded --.”

Dick raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure you two aren’t soulmates?”

She snickered. “Considering his actual soulmate could run me through with her fencing sword, I’m gonna say no.”

“You can’t kill someone with a fencing sword.”

“She’d find a way,” Adrien said grimly.

The two laughed at Dick’s horrified expression.

Marinette hopped back up onto the hamster ball and smiled as she sat down on it. Tim didn’t seem that bothered anymore, he was just laying down inside it and playing with a loose thread of his purple suit jacket as he listened to them all talk.

“Either way, I don’t really see him like that. He’s like an annoying stray I found on the side of the street and decided to adopt --.”

Batman stepped through the door and raised his eyebrows.

Dick snickered. “Golly gee, Batman! Looks like the way to summon you is to mention adoption.”

“What did you just say?! What the hell is a ‘go-lee gee’--?!” Said Marinette, who wasn’t even going to touch the serial adoption thing.

Adrien, however, was: “I can’t be adopted, I have a dad.”

Batman frowned. “But no mom?”

“She…” He looked away. “Isn’t around anymore. Either way, I still have a dad so you can’t adopt me.”

Dick grinned. “We can fix that for you.”

“You’d kill him?!”

“No,” said Batman. “We’re against murder.”

“I’m not,” said Marinette. “I still think we should kill him as Ladybug and Chat and say ‘we think he was Hawkmoth’ and, when Hawkmoth releases another akuma, we just say ‘oops our bad’. Parisians are stupid. They’d believe it.”

Adrien threw his baton at her.

“Is your dad really that bad?” Said Batgirl, causing everyone to jump a bit. They hadn’t realized she was there.

Marinette glanced at Adrien. This wasn’t her story to tell.

He shrugged. “He’s about as good as any other rich parent I’ve met.”

Batman seemed a bit offended by this, but he didn’t say anything.

“Speaking of awful parents, where are Joker and Harley’s bodies? I wanna give them a good kick.”

“We don’t kill people,” repeated Batman.

Marinette shrugged. “Fine. Where are they tied up? I’ll kick them if they’re alive, too.”

The three bats looked at each other awkwardly.

Marinette and Adrien exchanged frowns.

“They are tied up, right? You did capture them, right?” Said Adrien slowly.

“Well…” said Batgirl.

“Actually…” Continued Dick.

Marinette mumbled curses and Adrien rested his head in his hands.

“Americans,” hissed Adrien.

“Well, I guess I was going to keep stopping by America to make sure Tim got better, but I guess I’m going to be staying for other reasons, too.” Marinette shook her head slowly. “At least it’s summer. I can’t miss school.”

Adrien threw his hands in the air. “Now I’ll have to sneak out during the day, too.”

Batman sighed. “Neither of you have to do that.”

~

Tim wondered, vaguely, what Gotham thought of the sight of their newly expanded crew as they started their walk to the Batcave.

He walked along in his hamster ball. They didn’t trust him to be mentally stable enough to be let out just yet. He figured that was fair enough, considering everything that he had done that night.

Bruce had driven the Batmobile home alone. He said it was to make sure it got home safely. Everyone knew it was so he could have some time to himself.

Dick was balancing on top of the hamster ball, grinning widely. It was probably the closest he’d gotten to a circus act in years, to be honest.

The new guy, Adrien, was talking to Dick with a bright smile on his face from beside Tim. They were switching languages pretty much constantly and, though Tim could understand most of the words individually, he had a lot of trouble stitching it together while also catching the rest of the conversation. He had gathered that they were discussing things to do in America, but that was about it.

Barbara and Marinette walked at the front of the group, describing their respective supervillains and their abilities. They’d figured that they should at least know who they’re up against if they’re going to be devoting such large portions of their days.

He watched Marinette walk, his arms crossed over his chest as he thought.

He’d definitely been expecting her to be different. With all her interests, from sewing to baking, and the number of friends she had he’d thought her to be more… quaint. He supposed that it made sense that she wasn’t completely normal, he wasn’t exactly normal himself, but it still had come as a surprise.

She was pleasant, sure, but she had proven that she was perfectly capable of handling herself when he was fighting her.

He felt himself smile.

He liked that she was around. If nothing else, having her around was interesting, and he was glad for anything to keep his mind off of what had happened the past few weeks.


	7. Chapter 7

Tim watched as everyone debated what to do with him. They had all changed out of their costumes (except for Marinette, who was still using the turtle miraculous) and now sat around the dinner table with their mostly untouched plates.

(It was all finger food, Alfred had thought it best not to get forks and knives involved.)

He sipped at some coffee he’d been given. Marinette had opened a hatch in the hamster ball to hand it to him. Of course, when he’d tried to open the hatch himself when no one was looking, it hadn’t worked for him. Now, he just sulked in the corner.

“We don’t know if he’s really safe enough to let out of his hamster ball, yet,” said Barbara.

Dick rolled his eyes. “Leaving him in it is inhumane.”

“Is it?”

“Considering you’re calling it a hamster ball, I’m gonna say yes.”

Adrien shrugged. “We couldn’t keep him in it full time, anyways. Even if she constantly brought him around with her, she’d have to sleep at some point.”

“Debatable,” said Marinette, holding a Big Gulp cup filled to the brim with espresso shots.

Bruce steepled his fingers in front of him on the table and all the kids looked up at him so he could speak: “We can’t keep him locked up in general. His mental health is already fragile enough, social and physical isolation would only worsen it.”

Marinette nodded calmly. “The Miraculous Cure can only do so much. I haven’t checked to see if my soulmarks are back to normal, but I doubt it.”

It was silent as everyone’s gazes fell on Tim. He looked into his coffee. He knew they were giving him pitying looks, he wasn’t stupid, but he didn’t want to look up and confirm it. Their pity only made everything that happened to him feel more real.

He was glad when Marinette suddenly snapped her fingers and pointed at Adrien, pulling their attention away from him. He didn’t know what he would have done if they’d kept looking at him like that.

“Hey, give me a portal to my room?”

Adrien raised his eyebrows but complied.

She stepped through the portal and they all looked at each other awkwardly as they listened to her throw things around. After a little bit, she walked back inside with a grin.

She held up a notebook. It was well-worn and filled with multi-colored tabs. The little ‘writing’ that he could see, which was on the cover in glitter, could have easily been mistaken for squiggles for how illegible it was.

She got a couple of raised eyebrows and huffed.

“I’ve kept track of all of my soulmarks over the years, so at least we can make it easier to get used to normal life again by giving him stuff to do that he likes.”

Tim felt his face warm. A notebook keeping track of his likes and dislikes? He knew for a fact that it was important to her, too. He rested a hand over where he knew the tiny notebook tattoo was on his knee. How dare she be so cute?

Barbara laughed. “You really are his soulmate, huh?”

She blushed and held the notebook closer to her chest. He smiled. Good, at least he wasn’t the only one blushing.

“Well, yes, it’s not like I’m faking it.” She thumbed through the pages. “Right, I don’t exactly know what some of these mean. Like there was this circus one for a while --?”

Dick winced a little and raised his hand. “That one’s me. He was apparently obsessed with me for a while. It’s how he figured out our identities.”

She nodded slowly. “Makes sense. It explains why your name popped up around the same time…"

She flipped through for a while, and he noted that she was looking specifically at red tabs. Still, she didn’t ask any more questions. He raised an eyebrow.

She closed the notebook when Adrien tried to look over her shoulder.

Bruce sighed. “We’re all going to have to keep an eye on him. He seems to be in better shape than he was earlier, but we can’t be too cautious. This won’t be a thing that will disappear at the end of the week and we cannot treat it as such. Understand?”

Everyone nodded.

Marinette hesitantly reached a hand out and made a tiny motion with her fingers.

The hamster ball flickered and then disappeared.

They all watched Tim anxiously as he slowly pushed himself to his feet. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse from lack of use: “Hey, guys. How’s it going?”

~

Marinette yawned as she stepped into her room, sending a wave to everyone as the portal closed behind her.

She set the notebook on her desk and sighed as she let her transformation drop. She handed Wayzz the turtle miraculous and sent him off to give Master Fu her thanks and his miraculous.

Normally she would stay up, but the day’s events had been… tiring, to say the least. Besides, she probably wouldn’t need to do anything that night, Hawkmoth hardly ever akumatized two people in a day.

She started to change into her pajamas, then paused and checked her mirror.

On her back was two names: Harley Quinn and Joker. This made sense, his hatred of them was far more personal than it had been when they’d just been represented as a deck of cards. She added it to her notebook.

She checked her back and found that there was nothing else, so she turned around to see the nicer things.

The gag gun had disappeared, replaced by a computer mouse.

She didn’t know what to think about the fact that him being Robin wasn’t over her heart again, but she figured it made sense that he’d be hesitant to take up the mantle again considering the last time he’d done any work as Robin he’d been tortured.

Her eyes found their way to the tiny bowling ball on her hip and she smiled faintly. Oh, so he’d enjoyed ‘bowling’ with her earlier. Cute. She didn’t know if the fun would transfer over to regular bowling, but she figured it would be worth a try as she added the picture and date to her notebook.

The names were back. Her eyes traced over the familiar letters and a sigh escaped her lips. Good. Same places and everything. At least he still valued his relationships.

And then her eyes caught sight of a new name on her shoulder. She felt a blush rise to her face.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng.


	8. Chapter 8

Marinette and Adrien stared at the wall of text in front of them blankly. Bruce was giving them a lecture on every villain -- sorry, Rogue -- in Gotham. There was… a lot of them, to say the least.  
French scrolled past her eyes and she rested her head in her hands, not even bothering to look at the words anymore.

“Hey, Bats, I have a question...” said Tim, who had just walked into the Batcave for work.

He’d not given up vigilantism entirely, just fieldwork, and they were all just glad he hadn’t immediately jumped back into patrols. They were perfectly happy to allow him to sit back at the computers and talk to them over comms as long as he communicated when things were becoming too much.

Which is probably what the heroes should have done about ten minutes ago when they’d been struggling to wrap their heads around why a guy with a scar over half his body was so feared in Gotham. They took so long wondering about this that they got left behind and what do you mean there’s a sentient mud monster running around --?

She was pulled from her thoughts as Dick grabbed her and Adrien by the backs of their shirts and gently dragged them away.

She blinked. “Um --?”

“Shh! Do you want to escape or not?” He chided quietly.

She hesitated and glanced at Tim, finally beginning to understand what was going on. He was distracting Bruce so they could escape. She caught his eyes briefly and he made a tiny shooing motion with his hands before nodding and responding to something his father said.

She and Adrien gave each other looks. Sure, it was certainly a lot to take in at once, but it was all pretty important information if they wanted to start doing patrols…

They allowed Dick to lead them along. They were hard-working, sure, but they were still fourteen.

~

He raised his eyebrows at her as she stepped into his room, hugging a skateboard.

“Are you on ‘what does Tim still like to do’ duty for today, then?”

She huffed lightly. “I could just be doing this because I want to get to know my soulmate, you know.”

“Is that so?”

She chose not to answer, holding up the skateboard for him to see. “Tada!”

“I could buy one myself, you know. I have one, actually. Somewhere.”

She shrugged. “I know, I tried to learn a while back when I saw the soulmark. Don’t get what’s so fun about falling on your face, but if you enjoy…ed it then you should at least try and get back into it.”

He gave a small smile. “If you fall on your face a lot you’re doing it wrong.”

“Really? I thought faceplanting was the goal.”

“No, no, not quite.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Would you like me to teach you?”

She mimicked his posture with a cheeky grin. “You just want to see me fall.”

He shrugged. “Possibly.” He waved her along with a tiny grin on his face.

She followed after him and he walked backward to make sure she didn’t get lost in the house.

He’d overheard a few horror stories from Adrien about how clumsy she was when she wasn’t in her Ladybug costume and he just had to know whether or not it was true. He’d seen her fight as Ladybug, she’d been pretty much perfect then, there was no way…

Unless there was.

And she literally didn’t even need to be on the skateboard to take a tumble.

She tripped over air and probably would have taken Tim down with her if he hadn’t been a little prepared. He caught her waist and pulled her close to him, giving a cheeky grin as her face crashed into his chest.

She looked up at him slowly and a blush spread across her face. “Hi,” she squeaked.

Tim laughed softly. “Hi.” He let go now that she had regained her footing, taking a step back.

She brushed herself off and coughed awkwardly. “Right. That didn’t happen.”

“Did it not?” He continued leading her along. “How is someone as clumsy as you a superhero?”

She gave him a pout. “I didn’t use to be.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Really! Being Ladybug means I have to have a lot of luck, and, I guess to balance it out, when I’m not Ladybug my luck just gets awful.”

He guessed that kind of made sense.

Still, it was kind of funny, and he wasn’t going to pass up on an opportunity to see just how awful her luck could get.

And so he took her outside and attempted to teach her how to skateboard. He really did put some effort in, he thought it would be kind of cool to have someone to skate with, but he was quickly realizing that she just might be unteachable as he watched her fall yet again.

This time, she didn’t get up, laying in the grass with a sour look on her face.

He leaned over her with a grin. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “This is impossible.”

He shrugged. “It takes practice. You’re not going to be good at it immediately.”

“What if I want to be good at it immediately, though?”

“Then you’re going to be disappointed.” He flashed her a grin, holding out a hand for her to get up. “C’mon. I said I was going to teach you and you’re not going to learn from down there. Let’s try again.”

“Why are you even bothering? I’m hopeless.”

“Well, that’s no way to look at it, now is it? And you’re improving. Now you can at least step on the skateboard without falling.” He hesitated. “Besides, even if you were hopeless at this, everyone’s gotta be bad at something.”

She stared at him for a long time, her face slowly reddening.

And then she pulled herself together enough to glare at him. “We’re doing something you’re terrible at tomorrow, then.”

“Not exactly the reaction I was going for but…”

He thought about it for a minute, his mind wandering over the different soulmarks he’d had. He wasn’t going to let her win without a fight, of course, so this took some careful thinking. Baking and sewing were off the table, he was a disaster at that… Gaming shouldn’t be too difficult, though. He used a computer a lot. Surely, there was no real difference, right?

“How about video games?”

She broke into a grin and finally took his hand. He pulled her to her feet.

“Video games sounds good.”

~

She tossed a controller at him.

He caught it and raised his eyebrows. “You were serious?”

“Yes, I was serious!”

And she was going to make sure that he lost. Usually, when she knew that people were going to be bad at it, she would at least go easy on them and let them win a bit. Not with him, though. There would be no mercy.

He dropped his controller with a groan, the millionth ‘Player One Wins!’ proudly displayed on the screen.

She set her controller beside herself and smirked at him.

“You’re cheating.”

“Maybe you’re just terrible.”

He rested his head back against his headboard, glaring at the controller in his lap. “I take back that ‘everyone is bad at something’ thing. I am not allowed to be bad at things. I’m going to devote my entire life to beating you at this… ‘Ultimate Mecha Strike III’ thing.”

“Well, then you shouldn’t have told me. I’m going to practice night and day. You will never catch up.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. He smiled despite himself.

He picked up his controller again and pressed the start button. She squeaked and scrambled for her own controller.

“That’s cheating!” She whined as she finally managed to grab ahold of it and started playing.

He lost. Again.

She smiled widely, turning to look at him. He wasn’t sulking like she expected (and maybe wanted), he was just watching her with his head on his hand, a tiny smile playing at his lips.

She blushed and looked away. “Can’t believe you had a headstart and you still lost.”

He snapped out of it a bit, sending her a half-hearted glare. “You’re banned from my house.”

She grinned and scooted closer to him on the bed.

“Fine. I guess I can teach you a few tricks.”

~

Tim didn’t really keep close track of his soulmarks, to be honest.

Sure, he always found them cute, but he never actively looked for them. He’d done it for a while, but it had only ended in him feeling disappointed when he didn’t find anything new (because new soulmarks only popped up around once every few months for him). He’d decided that it was just a hassle and had chosen to just let himself find them when he found them.

So that was why, when he saw his name on his chest, he was completely taken off guard.

His face burned red as he looked at the script. Tim Drake. He ran his finger along it, almost expecting it to rub off like ink from a particularly awful prank…

But it didn’t.

He dropped back onto his bed and tried to fight back the growing smile on his face.


	9. Chapter 9

She breathed out as she broke Mr. Pigeon’s whistle for the 21st time.

“God, when will Hawkmoth show up again? We haven’t seen him in ages,” complained Marinette as she caught the butterfly. She waved it off vaguely.

“It’s almost like he doesn’t want us to beat him,” complained Adrien, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Right?”

Tim laughed over the comms. “Sucks that you guys can’t track the butterflies.”

The heroes looked at each other in silence for a long time.

“You… you have tried to track the akumas, right?”

“Well…” Began Adrien.

“About that…” Continued Marinette.

Tim sighed.

~

He looked up from the computer as she took a seat beside him and raised his eyebrows slightly. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she mumbled, sipping at her coffee cup. She started pulling up tabs on a different screen.

He gave a grin. “You didn’t get me any?”

“Dick said you’re cut off.”

He sighed. Man, he’d been hoping that she hadn’t known. Now how was he supposed to stay up when he’d been expressly told to go to sleep?

“I don’t get that. You drink more than me. You should be banned, too.”

She shrugged. “I can portal out and get some if I want. You can’t. You’re easier to control.”

Damn it. That made sense.

He rested his head back against the chair and crossed his arms. “This is stupid.”

“Mmm,” she hummed, still clicking away at the computer.

He huffed at her apparent disinterest in his struggles. He looked at her screen to see what had captivated her attention and raised his eyebrows. “If you needed a map of Gotham you could’ve just looked it up on your phone.”

“Not what I was doing.” She sighed. “I’m trying to figure out where Joker would be hiding. He’s super white. You’d think someone’d see him by now and post him on Twitter.”

He shook his head. “Not if he killed everyone he saw.”

“But he hasn’t done that. There hasn’t been any major shootings, no mysterious missing camera footage, nothing.” She crumpled the now empty coffee cup in her hands. “It’s like he just... disappeared.”

He scooted his wheely chair closer to her and frowned as he looked at the files she was searching through over her shoulder. She was, shockingly, right. Not only had Joker not been implicated for any crimes, but the city had also been devoid of pretty much everything major since he’d been gone. No bank robberies, no shoutouts, nothing. It was as if every major criminal had agreed to take the month off.

“Gotham is too quiet,” he whispered.

She nodded grimly.

~

Marinette sighed lightly as she stepped into the Batcave and found Tim zombie-ing around. She caught his arm before he could bring another cup of coffee to his lips.

“When was the last time you slept?”

He mumbled something that might have been ‘never’.

She shook her head. “I know finding Joker is important, but you have to sleep more.”

He groaned.

She tried to pull the mug away from him.

He didn’t let go, hooking his legs around his swivel chair. She pulled again and cursed when this only succeeded in making him roll a few centimeters.

She narrowed her eyes and started dragging him around the Batcave by his mug. Eventually, he’d have to give up or his body would give out. She could wait. She was hopped up on caffeine and it was only midday in France. She could outlast him.

Dick walked in, twirling his escrima sticks like batons. He stopped short as he spotted the heroine dragging her soulmate around the Batcave while he hung off of her.

“Uh…?”

“DONT YOU FUCKING JUDGE ME, DICK.”

He raised his hands in a kind of ‘okay, damn, don’t hurt me’ fashion and started backing away slowly.

“Diiiiiick, help meeeeeeee,” begged Tim.

Dick hesitated, his eyes flickering between both of them, before he apparently decided that it would be better to just fall to his doom than choose a side. He hopped over the nearest railing and disappeared.

Marinette blinked. “Did he just… die...?”

“I’m fine!” He yelled from somewhere in the cave.

“Oooookaaaaay… what is wrong with this family?” She whispered.

“One day you’ll be one of us, so you’re insulting future you right now,” Tim teased quietly, only to whine as she managed to finally kick the chair away from him.

She hooked his arm around her shoulders and bore most of his weight as she began dragging him up to his room. “Who says we’re going to get married?”

“Hopefully you, one day, but if you don’t there’s no way Bruce wouldn’t adopt you.”

She rolled her eyes. “You need to sleep.”

“No…”

“Yes.”

She pushed open the door to his room and raised her eyebrows at the spotlessness. She had expected it to be covered in a fine layer of dust with how little he used it, but she supposed that Alfred would never let the mansion fall into even slight disrepair.

He sighed and attempted to lean away from her. She probably would have actually fallen if she hadn’t been prepared for some kind of retaliation but, as it was, she still ended up having to grab the doorframe to stop them from hitting the floor.

He pouted. “I don’t wanna sleep.”

“Okay, fine, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t make you sleep,” she said, dropping him on the bed.

She crossed her arms over her chest as he considered the question.

He couldn’t seem to meet her eyes as he mumbled his answer: “Nightmares.”

Marinette had been prepared to immediately shut him down, her mouth halfway open, but then she snapped it shut.

That was actually a very good reason. Huh.

What was she supposed to say? She wasn’t his therapist! She was fourteen! Give her a break!

She watched him pull his pillow to his chest and bury his face in it. There was a tiny pang in her chest.

Even if she wasn’t his therapist, she still wanted to help…

She hesitantly sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand. He stiffened slightly and looked up at her with a tiny, somewhat confused, frown playing across his lips. She gave him an awkward smile in return.

“You’re going to pass out no matter what, but… I’ll stay here and make sure you don’t have any nightmares, okay? I promise.”

He squeezed her hand a little bit to say he understood and settled into the blankets. After a bit, he gave a short laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“You say ‘okay’ a lot when you don’t know what to do,” he teased quietly.

She blinked. “Oka --?”

He cut her off with his laughter and her face reddened.

“That’s it! I’m leaving!” She joked, only to feel his grip tighten on her hand. 

“Don’t go. Please.”

She looked at his wide eyes and felt herself blush harder. “I was kidding, I made a promise. Besides, I don’t think you’d sleep if I left.”

His grip slackened a little bit.

“Actually… my body kinda gave up when I laid down here and now it won’t let me get up.”

She nodded slightly. “Yeah, they do that when you do something stupid and then lay down. They’re pretty good at making sure you don’t overexert yourself.”

He huffed. “Stupid human limitations.”

Marinette grinned and ran her thumb along the back of his hand. “Awful, really.”

He gave a short hum of agreement before closing his eyes. After a bit, she felt his grip slacken on her hand.

She pulled the blanket over him properly and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Tim smiled in his sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**(Tw. It’s a whump, and it’s not even that bad by my standards, but I figured I’d tag anyways)**

He pulled a smile to his face as he turned back to where the old woman he had helped was last, but she was nowhere in sight. Confusion flickered in his mind, and a tiny part of him told him that something was terribly wrong, but he’d not been given enough time to react.

A mallet hit him on the side of the head and he went crashing to the ground, little more than a groan leaving his lips as he tried to push himself back to his feet. The woman was still there, he needed to get her away --.

His eyes found their way to Harley Quinn, who was wiping makeup from her skin.

He struggled to push himself up, his head ringing. He’d been tricked, he had no one to save, he needed to leave --.

She smiled brightly, giving him a tiny finger wave before swinging her mallet again...

He was pulled from unconsciousness when cold water was tossed over him.

Tim looked up into the bleached faces of Harley and Joker and a tiny gasp escaped his lips that had nothing to do with the sudden cold.

God, no no no no no --.

He forced himself to relax a bit. He’d be useless if he allowed himself to freak out like this. He just needed to concentrate. He needed to get away...

He was on the floor, the stone cold on his bare arms. His arms and legs were pinned underneath him with... ropes. Ropes! He could get out of that. He just needed to time it right.

“Well, if it isn’t our favorite boy blunder!” Said Joker, the smile on his face somehow stretching wider than usual.

Tim jutted his chin out as much as he could from his spot on the ground. “Man, you really do just take one joke and run it into the ground, don’t you?”

Joker’s smile didn’t waver, but he could see the way his eyes narrowed.

Good, if he could get them angry enough, then he could use their distraction to escape --.

A mallet hit him over the head again and he groaned in pain as lights danced behind his eyes. Hm. Well, that wasn’t quite to plan, but this was still doable…

Harley giggled, twirling the mallet in her hands. “Do we know for sure that we crushed the Robin findy-thingy?”

“Not yet, poo. How about you make sure? Make sure he’s alive, though, I have plans for him.”

He started to walk away and Tim’s eyes widened as Harley brought her mallet up with a bright smile on her face.

He didn’t know which possibility was worse: Harley beating him to death or what would happen to him if he survived.

Well, he wasn’t about to find out. The ropes slackened and he rolled out of the way of a swing. He wrenched his arms free

He started trying to untangle his legs from the ropes but then decided that it was a lost cause as they got even more tangled. He’d find a knife or something later, he couldn’t just spend time trying to get out like that when someone was attacking him.

He barely managed to move out of the way of Harley’s next swing and looked around quickly for an exit.

There! On the complete opposite side of the room! Great!

Sarcasm aside, he reached around for the nearest blunt object and managed to grab ahold of an old board. He brought up his new weapon to combat Harley’s mallet, sure that he wouldn’t get lucky another time, and cursed as it splintered on impact.

Woodchips attacked them and Harley was forced to fall back to avoid getting too cut up.

Not what he’d wanted, but still good! He had distance, all he needed was to get away!

He got to his feet again and started attempting to hop-run away, only for her to step on one of the trails of rope that still bound him. He cursed as he was pulled off-balance, a hand flying out to catch his fall on instinct and he screamed in pain as his arm crunched under the sudden weight.

He brought his definitely broken arm to his chest and flipped over to look at Harley.

She was advancing on him, her mallet resting on her shoulder. She was panting, at least. Those few swings had been hard, the mallet was heavy. Maybe he could use that.

Well, not now. Now he needed to get out of those pesky ropes because she was making sure to walk on it so he couldn’t just scoot away.

He thrashed against his bindings.

One of his stray kicks managed to knock over a nearby table and a bunch of weird needles rattled across the stone.

Harley gasped and dropped her mallet. A bright smile made her way across her face as she picked up the nearest needle.

He frowned. A tranquilizer? Weird. Why hadn’t they just used that earlier?

He wasn’t given much time to think about it as Harley jumped on top of him and jammed it into his neck.

But, instead of making him feel drowsy, all he could feel was pain. Fire coursed through his veins, and he thrashed around. A scream tore from his throat.

Please make it stop please please please he’d do anything please just make it stop --!

**(Tw over <3)**

He snapped out of it and wiped the tears from his eyes.

He wasn’t in bed anymore, the only way you could tell he’d ever been in it at all was the bit of blanket wrapped around one of his ankles. The floor was cold beneath him and he breathed out a sigh as he let his hands drop.

And then he realized he wasn’t just on the floor, he was on top of Marinette.

He took in the chunk of hair stuck in one of his hands and the way one of her eyes wouldn’t open behind her Ladybug mask.

She slowly lowered her arms from where they’d been attempting to protect her head. He absolutely hated the way her visible pupil was still dilated with fear, the way she kept her arms in a position where she could quickly get back into a defensive stance.

“Oh my god, Nette, I’m so sorry. I swear, I didn’t think it would get this bad, I shouldn’t have asked you to --.”

Her hands grabbed the front of his shirt and she pulled him down. Her arms wrapped around him tightly and he tensed up. He’d just attacked her. He didn’t deserve this --.

“It was an accident. And… I summoned a lucky charm when I saw you were starting to thrash a bit. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

He felt a sob escape him. He buried his face in her hair, returning her hug.

Even if he didn’t deserve her affections, they did feel pretty good.

~

Marinette sat on the roof as she waited for Adrien to return from his definitely-not-bonding time with Bruce.

She saw their figures appearing over the horizon. She sent a tiny wave to Adrien and went back to messing with her yoyo.

A few minutes later she heard the tiles of the rooftop crunch as he came up next to her. He dropped down beside her.

“M’lady,” he said, a grin evident in his voice.

She looked up at him and saw his eyes widen.

“Holy crap, Nette, I thought you didn’t have patrols tonight. The heck happened?!”

She brought a hand to her eye. It was getting hard to ignore the throbbing at this point. She’d told Tim that she’d used a lucky charm to help alleviate some of the guilt, but damn did she wish she’d thought of that when he’d come at her. Her mind had gone blank the moment she’d seen that Tim was crying. She’d barely even thought of turning into Ladybug so she could at least take the pain better.

It was so… unlike her to not think. She didn’t know if she liked it.

Marinette looked back over the horizon, glaring at nothing in particular. “Tim --.”

He started to get up. “I’ll kill him --.”

She rested a hand over his arm and held him down. She sighed and continued: “-- had a nightmare. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Had a…?” He settled back into his spot beside her, a frown playing across his face. “Oh…”

Silence stretched between the two of them.

She sighed and rested back against the roof, letting her head tip back. “I’m killing Joker.”

His head whipped around to look at her. “You are?”

She nodded.

It wouldn’t fix anything. Tim would continue to struggle, it wouldn’t just go away no matter what Marinette did or whether Joker lived. Only time could really heal him. She knew that.

She gripped her yoyo tighter.

But it would at least make sure no one else had to suffer like that again.


	11. Chapter 11

She let her pleasant smile drop as the door closed behind the most recent akuma. Her grip tightened on her yoyo.  
She and Adrien had missed the akuma’s appearance. Again.

“There’s just not enough time,” she hissed.

Adrien flopped onto the pavement with a groan. “Christ, Nette, why is working in two cities so hard?”

Marinette shrugged and tossed her lucky charm with a mumbled “miraculous ladybug”. Ladybugs swirled around them both and she felt the bones in her leg repair themselves. Perfect. Now that she could, she kicked the nearest lamppost as hard as she could and grinned at the tiny dent that it made.

“Property damage isn’t a good look on you, M’lady,” said Adrien.

She scoffed. “Fuck it! We save this city once a day, we get a little bit of property damage!”

“Fair enough.”

They ducked into an alley and detransformed, bitter expressions stuck on their faces.

They slipped out into the dark of the night. There was no one out, they’d been surprised to even find an akuma at this hour. Hawkmoth must have kept an alarm for three so he could catch people out when their emotions peaked due to exhaustion.

“School’s starting soon and there’s been no progress on Joker or Hawkmoth,” she whined. “There’s no way we can keep going back and forth like this.”

“Can’t you just do your creepy stalker-y thing and find this guy?”

Her face reddened and she sent him a glare. “The bats can hear us, y’know!”

She heard a click in her ear to indicate someone had turned on their comm and her face burned even hotter as she heard Barbara’s laughter.

“Of all the things for you two lovebirds to have in common, the stalking would not have been my first guess.”

There was a silence as this sunk in…

Then Adrien started cackling. “OH MY GOD HE DOES THAT TOO?!”

“Yeah! It’s how he found out our identities!”

He grinned. “It’s how she found out mine, too! Oh this is so good.”

“Shut up!” Said Tim and Marinette at the same time, which only made the others laugh harder.

“I only stalked you to figure out if you were my soulmate,” she tried to defend herself. “You were hot and nice to me! Those were my main two requirements!”

He snorted. “And Kagami?”

“She was hot and nice to me. I literally just said that was all it took.”

She heard the bats gasp. Shoot. Time to rush past that!

“Besides, you should be thanking me! I figured out she was your soulmate for you!”

He rolled his eyes and laughed.

“You shouldn’t be laughing, guys, stalking is serious,” said Dick.

Marinette blinked. She hadn’t realized he was on.

Adrien’s eyes widened in surprise as well. When he spoke next, he’d sobered a little. “It’s creepy, Nette… but it’ll be useful. So, I’m hereby giving you permission to stalk Hawkmoth.”

“I don’t need your permission.” She hesitated, pulling a yoyo from the pocket of her hoodie and messing with it. “I’ll do it, though. School is starting soon, and since our class is so good for akumas, I guess it’s the best time for me to do my thing.”

“I’ll help,” said Tim. “If we work together we’ll be able to do this way faster.”

She blinked. “You’re going to help from America?”

“Nope, I have an idea.”

She and Adrien gave each other confused looks.

~

The three of them stood at the base of the steps, eyeing the unfamiliar building warily. They were all new students there, and none of them looked eager to begin their first day of high school.

Tim shuffled awkwardly in his uniform. He hadn’t attended school in years. His parents hadn’t noticed, and it gave him a lot of time to do what he actually enjoyed. It felt odd going back, especially since he’d be in a group with people who were two years younger than him and French and oh god he was going to be the new kid oh fuck.

Marinette and Adrien also looked like they wanted to run as far in the opposite direction as they could. When Tim had asked, they’d both instantly said that it was just ‘first day nerves’. It obviously wasn’t but they weren’t going to fess up and it wasn’t like he was going to interrogate them.

Even if he wanted to, getting them to talk about something that stressed them out was a dangerous thing in Paris. Especially for Marinette and Adrien.

The bell rang, pulling the three of them from their thoughts and they quickly joined the throng of kids struggling to find their classes.

In true Marinette fashion, she stumbled into class five minutes late with a shouted apology. However, this wasn’t at all normal for the two boys that rushed in after her. The class giggled a little and went back to what they were doing.

He was told to remain at the front of the class and both Marinette and Adrien sent him pitying looks as they took two out of three of the empty seats at the back of the classroom. They fastened tiny nametags to their chests, probably mandated because he was new, and Marinette flashed him a thumbs up.

He gave her a tiny smile and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Tim cringed internally as he looked up at everyone. Fifteen students when you included Marinette and Adrien. At least they didn’t seem all that interested, listening to a girl in orange talk about some prince she apparently knew. Maybe he could just coast through the school year without drawing attention --.

The teacher gave a pleasant smile and clapped her hands for attention. It didn’t work, so she raised her voice slightly to speak: “Welcome back to school, everyone! Before we go over our syllabus, I’d like you to welcome our newest student. Would you please introduce yourself?”

So much for that idea.

He jutted his chin out. “Hello. I’m Tim Drake-Wayne.”

Everyone’s eyes snapped to him instantly.

“Yes, that one. Great, we’re done here.”

Their gazes never left him as he made his way up to Marinette and Adrien. He tried to brush it off, but he just couldn’t seem to ignore the pair of eyes boreing into the back of his head. He turned slightly and looked at where the girl in orange sat.

She smiled and batted her eyelashes at him.

He rolled his eyes. He’d gotten used to people like her long ago. People always did that when they heard his name.

To her credit, she didn’t look at all phased by his blatant annoyance by her.

His eyes flicked down to her nametag and he clenched his fists in his pockets.

Lila Rossi.

He shook his head slightly and kept walking, taking his seat beside Marinette.

The teacher was trying desperately to pull everyone’s attention back to her as she practically shouted her syllabus, but it was useless. They were all whispering among themselves, not even bothering to hide the fact that they were staring, and he was thrown a few pitying looks.

He didn’t know why he was getting the pitying looks, he doubted it was because of all the attention, but it wasn’t like he could just ask.

The only people who were actually paying attention to the teacher were Marinette and Adrien, who were copying down everything she said diligently.

Tim looked back at Lila and narrowed his eyes slightly. She was a bit two-faced, but he didn’t quite get why she was so important that she had a spot by Hawkmoth. He supposed even superheroines have personal problems but, damn, that was definitely some skewed priorities.

Still…

He glanced at Marinette’s free hand resting on the table and laced his fingers with hers.

He watched Lila’s flirtatious smile morph into an ugly scowl and tried not to smirk too much.

Tim’s gaze found its way to Marinette again and his smirk softened into a smile. She was a brighter red than her costume and her already ghastly penmanship was now, somehow, even worse.

He reached into his bag with his free hand and pulled out a pen and some paper. As cute as Marinette was, he doubted that he could glean anything from her notes and asking Adrien for his would work but likely include a lecture on how he should pay more attention.

He could feel Lila’s glare the whole time he copied down notes.


	12. Chapter 12

Tim was separated from the only two people in the country he knew within seconds of the lunch bell ringing.

Marinette had been called up by the teacher. Apparently, she was class president last year and she held the duties until the next election. She gave a tiny sigh as she released Tim’s hand and gave both him and Adrien kisses on the cheek before heading out with Mme. Bustier.

Adrien, at least, was still in the room. Unfortunately, though, he was completely surrounded by his classmates, who were all clamoring for pictures of his notes.

He crossed his arms over his chest awkwardly as he stood outside the door, waiting for either of his friends to appear.

The door swung open and out walked Lila.

Damn it, he’d held Marinette’s hand too long and her bad luck had rubbed off on him.

He sighed. “What do you want?”

She smiled sweetly at him, twirling a lock of her hair in her fingers. “I just wanted to show the new kid around some.”

“Wouldn’t that be Marinette’s job as class rep?”

Lila sighed and shook her head slowly. “Oh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… I wouldn’t get too close to Mari.”

He raised his eyebrows. A little late for that, but he supposed he may as well ask: “Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s a bit of a bully.” She looked at the ground. “Did she ever tell you about all the times she tried to ‘prove’ that I wasn’t actually disabled? Just because she didn’t like me? We hadn’t even talked, she was just mad I was talking to Adrien!”

A frown made its way across his face. Sure, it wasn’t at all like the Marinette he knew, but how well did he know her? He’d never seen how she interacted with people she didn’t like… and hadn’t he seen just how ruthless she could be when she wanted to that first day with ‘bowling’? In the way her expression hardened when Joker or Harley were mentioned?

He leaned against the wall. “There are other things?”

Lila’s head jerked up in surprise. “Huh?”

“You said ‘for one thing’. That implies more.”

“You’d think bullying would be enough…” Said Lila with a frown, but she continued: “Secondly, I think she’s a gold digger.”

His mind wandered to the few times Bruce had tried to buy something for her. How she’d ended up hiding money around for him to find so he couldn’t force it back into her hands. He gave a soft laugh. No, he wasn’t concerned about that. “Well, I can say she isn’t.”

Besides, if anyone here was a gold digger, it was probably Lila. Her eyes had lit up at the Wayne name. Projecting much?

She didn't seem all that convinced. “I just think it’s a little suspicious that she goes after you, Kagami, and Adrien. The girl has a pattern, and it’s money.”

He snickered. “Okay, and what about Chloe Bourgeois?”

“Chloe?” Said Lila slowly. “How do you know about Chloe?”

He frowned. “She’s in our class, right?”

“Well, yes, but they don’t talk or anything. How’d you know about her?”

“Simple: I’m her soulmate.”

Lila blanked. There was a few moments where she apparently rebooted, and then she scoffed. “Are you sure about that? Marinette likes to lie. A lot.”

“Pretty sure. Unless you know some other designers, who live in France, who bakes a lot, who carries a yoyo in their pocket, who also happens to love her parents.”

She finally stopped twirling her hair, shoving her hands in her pockets as she mulled this over. “Congrats on finding your soulmate,” she said in the same begrudging tone that siblings use when their parents make them apologize to each other. “But…”

“But…?”

Lila leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think she might be working for Hawkmoth.”

Don’t. Laugh.  
He shook his head, pursing his lips together tightly to stop himself from laughing. When he was sure that he could keep a straight face, he mumbled a “yeah, no.”

She shrugged. “Don’t believe me? She disappears during every akuma and she’s never been akumatized. I’m telling you, she’s working with him!”

He couldn’t help it anymore, he snickered. Sure, the girl had gathered some pretty good evidence, but she’d come to the complete wrong conclusion. Before he could really come up with a reason for why he was so convinced that she couldn’t be working with him, he spotted Marinette running back to the classroom.

Tim watched her eyes narrow when she spotted Lila and raised his eyebrows. Sure, three out of four of Lila’s points were wrong, but the first one still concerned him.

Marinette gave a forced smile as she came to a stop beside him. “Ready for your tour? I even got special permission to take you out of school for lunch today,” she chirped, holding up two tiny slips of paper.

He smiled faintly. “How’d you manage that?”

“I let it slip to the principal that I was showing around Tim Drake-Wayne. They practically begged me to keep the school food away from you.” She winked, then her eyes found their way to Lila. Her smile lessened. “Lunch is almost over for you, Lila, you should get something to eat. What with your weak immune system and all, we wouldn’t want you to get sick, would we?”

He narrowed his eyes slightly and glanced at Lila, who sighed like this was a regular occurrence.

“Fine, Mari, I’ll leave. I know when I’m not wanted.” She leaned up and kissed Tim on the cheek before he could really react. “A presto,” she said, sending a grin over her shoulder as she walked off.

He gave a tiny wave and then glanced at Marinette.

“You’re crumpling the papers.”

She snapped out of it and frowned, looking down at the passes. She loosened her grip and started smoothing them out with her fingers. “Right. Sorry. Let’s go.”

~

She should have warned him about Lila. She had no clue what the liar had said about her, but it clearly was affecting Tim. Earlier he’d been holding her hand and now he would barely even look her in the eyes.

She stared at the empty cup of coffee in front of her as they waited for the waiter to come back with their food in silence.

A tiny part of her was tempted to just let Lila have him. She’d managed to get everyone else, had picked off all her friends one by one. Even Adrien would usually eat with Nino. At this point, she was starting to think it would be easier to just let go of the hope that she could really have friends while she lived in Paris. It would certainly feel better than grasping onto him desperately only to lose him…

She pulled her yoyo from her pocket and started messing with it.

One attempt. She’d give herself one attempt.

“What did she tell you?”

He looked at her. Finally.

“She obviously told you something. What was it?”

He finished off his coffee and set down his cup. “She said you’re a bully.”

“Well, she’s a compulsive liar.”

“She said the same about you.”

She cursed as her yoyo tangled itself and started fixing the string. “And you’re going to believe her over me?”

He reached across the table and gently pulled the yoyo from her fingers and started working the knots out. “Normally, I wouldn’t, but…” He sighed lightly. “Would she really have a reason to fake an illness?”

Marinette blinked, then shook her head. “That wasn’t the first lie I figured out. The first one was --.” She cut herself off and gave the waiter an awkward smile as he set down a plate of waffles.

The teens mumbled their thanks and he left.

She switched to English for her next sentence: “She lied about being friends with Ladybug.”

He raised his eyebrows.

She frowned. He didn’t trust her. Great. She had proof, at least. She scrolled through the Ladyblog for a while before handing over the video of Lila claiming to be Ladybug’s best friend.

“So... she lied once to seem cool to her new classmates and you decided that was enough to never trust her again?”

She wanted to kick something. Seriously? She pulled her yoyo back from him and started pulling on the string as hard as she could. She needed her yoyo back. She needed to calm down. She needed --.

Her eyes spotted a black and purple speck on the horizon and she squeaked.

Fuck. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t get akumatized. She wouldn’t be able to fix things if she was akumatized. She couldn’t let someone die because of her --.

Tim followed her gaze and cursed quietly. “Listen, Nette, I’m sorry! I believe you!”

“I’m not stupid, Tim! I know you’re just saying that!” She hissed.

Angry tears formed behind her eyes. All the emotions she’d been holding back since Hawkmoth had begun his reign of terror were threatening to fall through and she couldn’t let that happen. God, she was feeling so much and she couldn’t handle it and she couldn’t allow herself to even try and someone was letting the akuma in and --.

She shut down.

Her emotions went from feeling like they were suffocating her to being practically nonexistent. She sunk in her seat, barely even paying attention to all the people scrambling for cover as fast as they could. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything at all.

The akuma paused inches away from her yoyo and she watched with a blank face as it slowly turned around and fluttered out the way it had come.

“Nette?” Said Tim quietly, his eyes not leaving the akuma.

She closed her eyes.

One attempt, she told herself. One last attempt.

“I’ll admit, I definitely didn’t like that Lila was getting close to Adrien and it made me more bitter and skeptical about everything she said than I should have been… but I still caught her in actual lies. About who she knows, about the things she’s done, about her illnesses, about everything. And I called her out on it every time, it’s why she’s so determined to keep everyone away from me. With more lies, of course, but they always have just enough truth that everyone believes her, and nothing I do ever seems to be enough to convince them.”

Tim said nothing for a moment…

And then she felt his hand rest over hers.

“I believe you… but --.”

She groaned. “Great. I tried. Want a tour before we stop talking to each other forever?”

“Not like that. I’m just saying… for all of her lies, she was projecting: bullying, gold-digging, lying…”

She nodded slightly. “Sure. So?”

“She also accused you of working for Hawkmoth.”

Her eyes snapped open.


	13. Chapter 13

She heard a knock on her balcony door and opened it. He stood outside, his hands stuffed in his pockets. She glanced him over. He was definitely more prepared than she was, he looked like he’d just walked out of a spy movie with all his equipment.

She looked it over with envy. Ah, the power of money.

Marinette waved him inside. “I’ve still got to get some stuff out.”

She dug through her room. Unsurprisingly, her parents weren’t exactly aware of this particular ‘hobby’ of hers… which meant that she’d had to hide everything pretty well. They didn’t exactly go through her room, but they still came up to talk to her often enough that having stuff out in the open was a terrible idea.

She scooped up the last piece of equipment and turned around.

He was also poking around her room, though the reason why was probably less innocent than ‘looking for spy equipment’... which already isn’t all that innocent, so take that how you will.

Her face flushed as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Find anything interesting?”

His shoulders froze and he dropped the tiny Chat Noir plush he’d found. “Your room… it’s... uh… very… pink.” He coughed into his hand awkwardly. “Yep. Got everything? Good, let’s go.”

He made to leave and she grabbed his arm.

Tim paused and looked back at her, giving her his most innocent smile. He was probably anxious that she was mad at him for snooping around her room (she wasn’t, she’d do the same thing in his room if he had actually lived there).

She hesitated slightly and let go, pulling out her yoyo to mess with. Now for the part of the night that she’d been dreading most: “We need a backup plan in case we get caught.”

“I doubt we will,” he said with a cocky grin.

Marinette shrugged. “I hope not, but in case… you’ll need to have some kind of suit so we can say it’s superhero business.”

He winced and looked at the floor. “I don’t want to get back in the Robin suit,” he admitted, his voice little more than a whisper.

She nodded slightly. She’d predicted that. He hadn’t once mentioned wanting to get back into the Robin suit, nor had the soulmark made a reappearance. She held up a finger for him to wait and then walked over to her desk, picking up a tiny box.

She’d thought for a long time about what to give him. She had wanted to give him the fox miraculous originally, it was the most in line with what they were doing; Trixx would give them extra cover and they could get closer to Lila without her detecting them. On the other hand, giving the fox miraculous to anyone besides Alya was risky. There was a risk of her becoming akumatized. They really didn’t need that right now.

And, so, she handed over the horse miraculous. It would give them a quick out when needed.

Also, she thought he’d look cute with glasses. Sue her.

He raised his eyebrows slightly and pulled them on.

She was right!

He frowned slightly and started squinting through the glasses. “Oh, crap, do I actually need glasses these are helpi -- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”

“Shhhhh! My parents are going to hear us!”

He pointed at Kaalki, who crossed her arms (? hooves? legs?) over her chest.

“Who is that,” she corrected, then turned to Marinette with a sigh. “Is he at least famous?”

“Yep. Tim Drake-Wayne. Rich and famous, just how you like them.”

Kaalki beamed. “Finally, someone who actually deserves me.”

Marinette rolled her eyes and turned to Tim, who was slowly backing away from the tiny god. “She’s not going to hurt you.”

“Well, yeah, I can and will punt her.”

She rolled her eyes. “She’s literally a god, but okay.”

“A WHAT?!”

Marinette heard a knock on the bottom of her trapdoor and cursed, quickly diving onto it before her mom could come in. Her hands and knees were scraped, but it was much easier than explaining why there was a guy and a god hanging out in her room.

“Marinette? Is everything okay in there?” Her mom pushed up on the door and she threw all her weight into holding it closed. “Who’s over?”

“Yes, mom, everything’s fine! This is just…” She floundered. “A new superhero?”

“How do you know superheroes?”

“I have an amazing personality.” She caught Tim’s eyes and mouthed that he needed to take off all the equipment and then transform.

He looked reluctant, but he complied.

She waited until he was fine and then finally pushed herself off the door, giving her mother an awkward smile as the trapdoor opened.

“Hi, mom, meet…” She looked at Tim and shrugged. “Horse-guy?”

Tim raised his eyebrows. “Horse-guy? Seriously?”

She shrugged. “Do you have anything better?”

“Uh…” He looked down at himself. “Cheval Brun?”

“Should’ve gone with Horse-guy.” She smiled and waved at her mom. “Great, now that you know nothing is going on, can you… go? I love you!”

“Love you… too?” Said her mom, her eyebrows knitting together. She slowly closed the trapdoor.

Marinette breathed a sigh of relief and laid back.

“Tikki, spots on,” she mumbled.

Tim grinned and offered her a hand up. “Ready to go?”

She took it and smiled as he helped her to her feet.

“Of course.”

~

She pulled her night-vision goggles to her eyes. Lila was… on her bed, scrolling through her phone. Threatening.

“Y’know, it feels weird to stalk someone I don’t like,” she said with a pout.

“Right?” Said Tim, frowning as he set up his camera. “Stalking is for obsessions only.”

“Exactly.”

She heard her comm click. “You guys are really weird,” said Adrien, sounding exhausted. “Just… in the future, can you stick to only stalking each other?”

“Sounds romantic,” said Marinette.

“No,” said Dick. “No, it’s not.”

Tim grinned. “It could be.”

“No --.”

“I say we let them. At least it’s not us anymore,” said Barbara.

Marinette laughed. “Exactly. Be glad.”

She felt Tim lace his fingers through hers and she was lucky it was dark because her face was quickly getting warm.

“We’re turning off comms to listen. We’ll turn them back on if we need to.”

Everyone mumbled a bye (and Dick warned that they would pick up the conversation later) and the soulmates turned their comms off in sync.

They waited there for a long time, their ears pressed to the devices Tim had brought to help listen in. But… it was almost like Lila was being intentionally boring. They didn’t have to peek over the side to make sure that she was still there, because they could hear her shift around on the bed or laugh occasionally, she just seemed to be very interested in her phone.

“Christ, she’s more boring than Adrien. At least Adrien sometimes played piano,” she joked quietly, resting her head back against the wall with a tiny sigh.

Maybe they were wrong about Lila. They’d been going off of shaky evidence at best. Still, something in her told her that they were right.

The thing telling her this was definitely fuelled by spite, but she was going to pretend that it wasn’t.

So she continued to listen in. There was a lot of waiting involved in stalking someone if you’re looking for something.

Her eyes found their way to Tim, who gave her a tiny smile.

Well, she might as well kill time.

“So, we going to talk about Lila?”

~

His smile dropped and he tried not to tense up too much.

“Thought we already did?” He said.

She shrugged. “A little, but I’d like to know why you were so convinced. Yeah, Lila is like that, but you seemed pretty determined to believe her over me.”

He hesitated, looking down at their interlocked hands. He’d hoped that her history with Lila would be enough to convince her that was all, but he supposed he should have known she’d be smarter than that.

Man, why couldn’t he just lie? He wanted to lie, it should have been so easy to say ‘oh, no, she’s just really convincing, you know that’ but he couldn’t bring himself to. Not when he’d seen how hurt she’d looked at the cafe, not when she was giving him that smile that said she’d understand no matter what.

Tim sighed and closed his eyes.

“It’s just… you’re so… good, Nette.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“No, really. Like, yes, you’re probably more revenge motivated than you should be, and you can be a bit of a pushover, and you rival Bruce in the bad coping mechanism olympics, but… you’re also a heroine, you’re sweet, and it feels like you were made for me but…”

She ran her thumb over the back of his hand. She looked like she was going to argue for a second, but ultimately just prompted him to continue with a: “But…?”

“But... that’s just not how things go in my life. There’s always some kind of downside, some huge ‘oh fuck’. So you being some sort of terrible person underneath really would have just been par for the course.”

He felt tears form in the back of his eyes. Venting always feels good after the fact, even if it opens old wounds while you’re doing it. Damn. He couldn’t really afford to do this in Paris, but here he was, and now that he’d started he couldn’t bring himself to stop. If he did, he doubted he’d ever be able to bring himself to tell her, and he wasn’t fond of that, either.

“And, I’ve never really told anyone about this, but… I don’t really… talk to a lot of people.”

“I know.”

His head shot up to look at her. “Huh?”

“You’re my soulmate. It took you until fourteen to get a single person’s name. I kinda guessed.”

Oh. Right.

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Well, yeah, my parents sucked and every person who ever tried to talk to me did it because they were rich. I ended up just never talking to people. The whole ‘friends’ thing is still kinda new to me, let alone getting a possible girlfriend.”

He gave a short, somewhat bitter laugh. “Not that you want to date me. I’m a bit of a mess. So is my life. You’d be better off if we were just friends, and even better if you stopped talking to me entirely.”

He felt her head rest on his shoulder and opened his eyes to look at her. She gave him a slight smile, but her eyes were locked on a place over his shoulder.

A frown made its way across his face and he started to turn to see what she was looking at, only to feel her cup his cheek and pull his face until he was looking at her again.

She met his gaze and her smile dropped into a serious look. “Listen: I like being around you. A lot. I’m not nearly as perfect as you seem to think I am, but I still want to be something good in your life. Please, let me.”

He let himself relax, resting his hand over hers and turning his head to press a tiny kiss to her palm.

“I know you only said that because there was an akuma, but… I’d like that.”

She blushed faintly and relaxed a little bit as well. “I still meant it.”

He looked at her for a minute, expecting to see some hint of a lie, but there wasn’t one. She met his gaze and smiled, leaning up slightly to press a kiss to his cheek.

He couldn’t help it. He turned his head and his lips brushed against hers.

She blinked in surprise.

He looked at her wide eyes and paled. Shit. “Sorry! I don’t know what --!”

She kissed him again and he felt himself smile as he kissed back. It was both of their first kisses, so they were, admittedly, a little awkward, but he could definitely tell why people liked it so much. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever felt so energized.

But, eventually, they pulled away. His eyes fluttered open to see she was blushing like mad, and the warmth in his cheeks told him that he was likely just as red. She smiled at him and he felt his heart do a tiny flip in his chest.

Eventually, though, Lila laughed at something on her phone and he was pulled back to reality.

He blinked a few times and looked away. They were here for a reason other than kissing. They had a job. “Did you see where the akuma came from?” He asked after a few seconds.

She snapped out of it as well, pulling her hand from his cheek to point over his shoulder. “Back that way --.”

They both looked at where she was pointing, where the akuma was slowly disappearing on the horizon.

“What are the chances it’s going back to Hawkmoth?”

“Worth a shot, don’t you think?”

They followed after it.


	14. Chapter 14

They followed the butterfly for a pretty good amount of time.

It was a lot harder to do than they’d originally expected, it turns out butterflies are a lot faster than people give them credit for, but their suits kept them going.

Tim was beginning to wonder if the akuma was going to Hawkmoth at all. It could technically just be searching for another akuma victim, there was nothing stopping that from happening as far as he knew. Still, this was their best bet. When were they ever going to get another chance to follow an akuma?

And then it dove behind a wall. The two glanced at each other and then jumped up to perch on top of the stone.

The butterfly fluttered there patiently as the ground opened up to reveal a giant, stained glass butterfly motif. The akuma fluttered through an open window and the hatch closed behind it. The fake grass slowly lowered back down until it looked like just another rich person’s courtyard.

Marinette’s mouth fell open. “Nevermind the Batcave, I want one of those.”

Tim gave her a tired smile.

Her eyes traced over the area to memorize it and then her eyes widened in horror. “Oh shit, I’ve been here before.”

He raised his eyebrows.

Marinette didn’t answer his questioning gaze, her hand fumbling to her belt for her yoyo. She flipped it open.

There was a few seconds before Adrien’s face appeared on the screen. He’d clearly just woken up, his blond hair a mess and his eyes squinty as he struggled to look at the bright light his baton must have been emanating.

“Hey, Chaton, come outside for a second. I know it’s your day off, I’m sorry, but… please? It’s serious.”

Adrien grumbled quietly and they heard the bed creak a bit before they lost connection.

Tim frowned and looked at his soulmate. “What do you mean ‘come outside’?” And then his eyes widened. “Is this his house?”

She nodded slightly, her lips drawn in a thin line. She hopped down into the grass and started shuffling around in it, looking for something.

A few minutes later, a window opened and Chat slowly stepped out and made his way over to Marinette.

Tim hesitated from his spot on the fence. He didn’t know Adrien nearly as well as Marinette did, didn’t know Gabriel Agreste at all, did he really have a right to be there when she broke the news?

He didn’t really know, but he figured he should at least go down and try to figure out the mechanism that opened up the ground.

He slowly walked along, scuffing his feet in the fake grass. There had to be a hinge or a crack somewhere...

“ -- t is it?”

Marinette started messing with her yoyo. She was nervous. Understandable, he’d probably be nervous, too, if he was telling a friend that their dad was a supervillain.

“... remember when I joked that your dad had Hawkmoth vibes?”

Adrien raised his eyebrows slightly. “Yeeeaaaah?”

“Well… itturnsouthe’sactuallyHawkmoth.”

He leaned against his baton. “Not funny, Nette.”

“But I’m not joking! Tim and I just saw the ground open up to show his lair! Tell him, Tim!”

Tim gave an awkward shrug. “We did see that, yes.”

“You have to understand how insane that sounds.”

“Yeah, it’s literally so stupid, but we just watched it happen! You have to believe me!”

“Why would I? You hate my dad, obviously you’d want an excuse to kill him. You said it yourself that you’d be fine framing him as Hawkmoth.”

Marinette groaned. “Yes, but that was -- mostly -- a joke! I swear, this actually happened!”

Adrien glared at her. “He’s not a great dad, but that doesn’t mean that he’s evil.”

The ground began to move underneath them and Tim quickly hopped to the side as it began opening up again.

And then his eyes found their way to Marinette and Adrien, who were too angry at each other to even notice the fact that the floor was splitting underneath them.

“I don’t lie! You know that!”

He scoffed. “I could count off millions of lies for this month alone.”

“To spare people’s feelings and keep my identity! That’s different! Why can’t people believe me for just once?!”

Tim cursed. He shouldn’t have used his portals earlier because they would have been really useful right now for getting them out of trouble.

He sprinted across the grass, his hand going to where his utility belt used to sit, and raised his eyebrows as he pulled a horseshoe instead. A horseshoe? Really? Who decided on these weapons?

Still, he tossed it at them. It beaned Adrien, who whined as he brought a hand to his head. “The heck was that for?!”

“BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION AND THE GROUND IS OPENING UP!” He yelled back.

Tim blinked in shock as the horseshoe came back to him like a boomerang. He stopped cold to catch it because missing would mean a hit to the face. Well, that wasn’t how physics worked.

He probably shouldn’t be shocked about physics being a sham when there was currently a god possessing his glasses, but whatever.

Marinette and Adrien were running to safety, which was all well and good… except now Tim was in the middle and he doubted he could run to the other side in time. He balanced precariously on the lip of the hatch as it slowly swung open.

And then it came to a sudden halt.

He was pitched forward and he screamed as he braced himself to crash through the glass.

A yoyo wrapped around him and he felt his back crack in multiple places as the string was pulled almost suffocatingly tight, but at least he wasn’t falling into Hawkmoth’s lair anymore.

But now there was a new problem.

An akuma fluttered past him and then came to a stop right in front of Marinette and Adrien, who both looked a mixture of angry and terrified, which was perfect for an akuma. So perfect, apparently, that it was having trouble choosing which one of them to akumatize.

Adrien batted at the butterfly as much as he could, trying to buy Marinette time, but it wasn’t all that affected as it dodged every swing of his baton.

Tim’s eyes found Marinette’s.

Marinette needed to let him go to get rid of the impending akuma. Tim knew that. She definitely knew it, too. But she wouldn’t. Because letting him go would mean a fight against Hawkmoth when they were wholly unprepared and, even worse, emotionally vulnerable. They’d lose for sure.

But not letting go meant one of them was about to be akumatized. Which wasn’t a great thing, either.

He watched her eyes flick from him to the akuma to Adrien and then back to him again.

Tears spilled over the front of her mask and the butterfly finally decided, fluttering towards her.

She cursed and pulled him to land hastily.

And then the butterfly touched her earrings.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partial hiatus for exams <3

She fell to her knees, clutching her head.

“Inamovibi-Lady, I am Hawkmoth.”

She needed to shut down. Why couldn’t she? She’d definitely hit her max. Her breath came out in shallow gasps, her eyes stung with tears. Why was she still feeling? Why couldn’t she stop? God, she wanted to stop --!

“The world is a cruel place, but only to people who don’t deserve it. Tragedy only befalls the best of people, and the wicked live without consequences.”

She couldn’t give in. Paris needed her. Any damage she did while she was akumatized would remain. She needed to summon a lucky charm. Her eyes found their way to her yoyo. Should she try and make a lucky charm at risk of being akumatized with it?

No. They would need the yoyo to purify the akuma. 

Hopefully, she wouldn’t cause too much damage.

“I am giving you the power to finally make them pay for what they’ve done.”

She needed to say no. No one had ever managed it before, but she had to do it. It was her responsibility. She couldn’t get akumatized. She couldn’t. She couldn’t let Paris down.

“They will finally see justice, all you need to do is give me the ladybug and cat miraculi.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear Adrien running away and had to hope that Tim was with him.

She couldn’t let them down.

“All you have to do is say yes.”

Her fingers dug into her scalp.

Just.

Say.

No.

“Yes, Hawkmoth.”

~

He cursed as he skid across the grass, tugging at the yoyo string as he attempted to free himself. The last time he’d been tied up like this hadn’t gone well, and he wasn’t eager for a repeat.

Adrien stood next to Marinette for a second, a shocked expression on his face as she fell to the floor.

“HEY! HELP!” Yelled Tim.

He snapped out of it and ran over. He tried to untie him for a second, then seemed to decide that it was a problem for later as Marinette was engulfed in purple and black smoke. He threw Tim over his shoulder and started running.

They had only gotten a block away before she walked out. Was that even her? Sure, she was still in her Ladybug outfit, but…

Her skin was bleached so pale that it shone in the moonlight, and a wide smile made up half of her face. She swung a giant judge’s gavel. He tensed at just how much the akuma reminded him of a mix of Joker and Harley.

Adrien glanced over his shoulder and picked up speed.

And then Tim watched her swing the gavel in a large arc. It morphed into a yoyo. Her smile stretched ever wider.

Her yoyo hooked around a lamppost nearby and she practically flew to them. Her yoyo detached itself midair and she did a flip that would have made Dick proud as she landed in front of them, a microphone now in hand.

Adrien skid to a stop.

“Hello!” She said without moving her mouth. Her voice boomed through Paris’s streets and people began to poke their heads out of windows. She looked around, her black eyes glittering like beetles, and started talking again when she apparently decided there was enough of an audience: “Don’t you know missing a court date is enough to get arrested?”

“I’m not French, so no,” said Tim awkwardly as Adrien set him on his feet to start detangling himself.

“True! I’ll give you a pardon for that, then. The crimes you were originally going to be tried for, though, I’m afraid can’t be ignored.”

Adrien sighed lightly as he pulled out his baton. “I don’t want to fight you, Nette --.”

“My name is Inamovibi-Lady, thank you.” She twirled the microphone in her hand and it stretched back into her original gavel. “Anyways, your crimes were that you never brought yourself to believe me, even when the truth was right in front of you.”

“I know your defenses, so I’ll tell them to everyone for you. Cheval didn’t listen because he thought I was too good to be true and Chat didn’t want to believe ill of his family.” She gave a fake sniffle and rubbed under her eyes like she was wiping away tears. “Enough to bring a tear to my eyes. If I could cry, of course.”

“But your personal issues don’t give you a warrant to push all your problems on me. Trust me, I’m a judge. I know all about warrants.”

Tim finally managed to get himself out and the yoyo hit the floor at his feet. He could breathe properly again, thank god.

But then she stepped closer, her gavel poised for a hit, and he seemed to forget how to breathe.

“So, your sentence is to live your lives through without anyone ever believing anything you say ever again! Good luck, darlings!”

Adrien brought his baton up to keep her from hitting them, but it seemed they weren’t quite her target. She slammed her gavel on the ground at their feet. A red circle stretched around them and they were engulfed in bright red light. He brought his hands to his eyes as the light threatened to blind him, and when he’d finally managed to open them again she was gone.

Fuck.

~

They tore through the streets, looking around for Inamovibi-Lady, but she’d completely disappeared.

“Right, her targets are definitely Hawkmoth and Lila.”

“Says who?” Said Adrien, raising his eyebrows. “She can’t fight Hawkmoth without getting deakumatized and Lila has nothing to do with what we did.”

Tim snorted. Really? Like getting deakumatized would stop Marinette from beating up a terrorist and Lila definitely had something to do with his half of the sentence. “Even if you were right, which you’re not, we’d be stupid not to check up on them.”

Adrien rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “We’d be wasting our time.”

“This conversation is wasting our time,” hissed Tim, before pressing a hand to his comm. “Hey, we have a problem in France. Ladybug got akumatized.”

“Yeah, now they’re an evil judge,” said Adrien.

Dick had the audacity to laugh. “Marinette? Akumatized? An evil judge? Funny joke, guys.”

“Yeah, she’d never let that happen,” agreed Barbara.

He groaned and let his hand fall back to his side. This was definitely going to be more of a problem than he’d originally thought. No wonder Inamovibi-Lady felt comfortable leaving them to go and enact her revenge. What could they really do? There was no way they could ask for help and even talking to each other was a pain...

They detransformed and they went to Marinette’s parents’ bakery. He needed to get some bread for Kaalki so he could open up a portal. Marinette would probably agree to go through the portal, if only because Joker and Harley were practically inaccessible. The bats might not believe him now, but he had to hope that seeing Inamovibi-Lady would be enough to convince them.

They sat down in a nearby alley to wait for their kwamis to recharge. Adrien didn’t need to do that, but he’d apparently decided that they should stick together.

Their phones buzzed and they frowned at each other as they pulled them out.

Inamovibi-Lady’s face beamed at them from their screens (not that her face seemed to be able to do anything else).

“Hello, Paris! Well, it’s really just my classmates and the police. No matter! Welcome to our second hearing of the night! Our special guest is…” She did a drumroll on her legs before stepping to the side with a wide flourish.

Lila was pressed back against her wall, looking like she’d rather be absolutely anywhere else. 

“I was right,” muttered Tim, sending Adrien a glare.

He only got a shrug.

Both of them considered going to save Lila. There was a pretty high chance Adrien knew where she lived, but…

Nah.

“YOU CAN'T DO THIS! MY MOTHER WORKS FOR THE EMBASSY!” Screamed Lila, pulling their attention back to their screens.

“Your mother isn’t here, now, is she?” She spun her yoyo at her side lazily. “Right, how about you plead your case? Would you like to defend yourself on the whole ‘lying to everyone in your class’ thing or the ‘working for Hawkmoth’ thing first?”

Lila sputtered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t want to talk, huh? Don’t you know that you get a lighter sentence when you plead guilty?”

Her yoyo wrapped around Lila’s neck. The liar gasped and clawed at her throat. Tears began rolling down her face.

“How about you talk?” Said Inamovibi-Lady. “I won’t be giving you another chance to tell your side if you don’t.”

Lila sobbed and continued trying to pull the string off of her neck.

The akuma gave her a few seconds before giving the camera an overexaggerated shrug. “Right, I tried. Every word that comes out of Lila’s mouth is a lie, anyway. You shouldn’t trust her to tell you the sky is blue without pictures... and, who knows, they’re probably photoshopped.”

“On top of that, she works for Hawkmoth. Isn’t that right?”

Lila hung her head.

“Cool! I actually wasn’t sure about the Hawkmoth thing, but it’s great that she didn’t deny it. Come get her, coppers!”

“Unless, of course, she wants to say something. Don’t really think there’s anything she can say to make this better for herself, can’t claim self-defense when your victims can’t fight back, after all.”

Inamovibi-Lady unhooked her yoyo and it morphed into a microphone. She pressed it to Lila’s mouth.

“I’m innocent! You have to believe me!” Her voice boomed around Paris.

The akuma tapped her hand to her chin as if considering it, then shook her head as she brought the microphone to her own lips. “Anyone who believes a word that comes out of your mouth is stupid, but I’ll make it so they can finally trust you! Your sentencing is that you can never lie again!”

“Wait, what?”

She turned it back into a gavel with a wave of her hand and hit the wall right beside Lila’s head and the girl screamed as she was engulfed in light.

The akuma picked up her camera and started out into the streets. “Right! Now that that’s done…” Her eyes narrowed. “I know you’re watching this, Chat and Cheval. I added you to this for a reason. How about we play a game? Hero to hero… and vigilante.”

Adrien and Tim gave each other wary glances.

“I can’t see you, but I’m assuming you said yes! I have three targets that I’m going after tonight. Well, five, but two of those are a bit harder to get to. I’m going to need a little bit of help, could you give me a hand, darlings?”

“Either way, you probably can guess who the third is. Feel free to go over to his place now if you don’t want to use your brains… but, if you want to help the other two, my first target is actually on this call, too! She and I have the same noble rank, and we used to be friends but, unfortunately, we just stopped connecting like we used to.”

She winked and the screen went black.

Tim frowned, resting his head on his hand. “Marinette is nobility?”

Adrien shrugged and shook his head.

Tim nodded slightly and rested his head back against the stone. It was definitely a riddle, then, but what did she --?

Wait a minute. Tim had believed him.

That didn’t make sense. He wasn’t supposed to believe a thing Adrien said.

But he hadn’t technically ‘said’ anything.

Tim snapped his fingers and pulled out his phone, typing a few words and then pressing send.

 _Timberly_ : Hey, I kissed Nette earlier

Adrien looked down at his phone and raised his eyebrows slightly. He rolled his eyes and typed his answer.

 _Adrikins_ : Cool? Not able to say that out loud?

Tim grinned.

 _Timberly_ : I could but I found a loophole

 _Timberly_ : As long as we’re not speaking out loud people can believe us

Adrien’s eyes widened.

 _Timberly_ : Is there a way to have our phones on us when we’re in our suits

 _Adrikins_ : Yeah. We just can’t be holding them when we transform.

And then Adrien facepalmed. Tim raised his eyebrows at him and waited for his text.

 _Adrikins_ : LADY WIFI.

 _Timberly_ : Who

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, frantically scrolling through a wikipedia article on the French Judiciary system: there has to be a pun here SOMEWHERE  
> This was the best I could do ;-;  
> I, too, am disappointed by my inability to make a good pun for Akumanette


	16. Chapter 16

Man, talking solely through text is really irritating when you’re running to go make sure your soulmate doesn’t ruin someone’s life.

 _Adrikins_ : Alya.

 _Timberly_ : Well why didn’t you just say that

 _Timberly_ : What was I supposed to do look up lady wifi in the phonebook

Adrien looked at his phone and rolled his eyes, then narrowly avoided running into a streetlamp.

 _Adrikins_ : Because you’ve only been in class for a day and Lady Wifi was the answer to the riddle. And stop being rude.

He sighed.

 _Timberly_ : Sorry I’m just a bit anxious about hurting her

 _Adrikins_ : *Hurting her for a second time.

 _Timberly_ : Shut up

 _Adrikins_ : Lol. And don’t be. She’ll be fine once the akuma is gone. We’re the ones who’re screwed.

Tim’s memories of the last akuma fight were pretty hazy. He vaguely remembered thinking that Marinette was capable and smart. It had been a good thing then... but now that they were about to fight her and she wasn’t going to be holding back to make sure they didn’t get too hurt.

Adrien was right. They were screwed.

They needed a plan, but…

Plans usually rely on information, and Inamovibi-Lady’s powers were mostly unknown. They knew for a fact that she had three items (the microphone, gavel, and yoyo), but there was nothing saying that they couldn’t mold them into other things.

Speaking of the microphone…

“Time for hearing number three!” The akuma’s voice echoed through the streets, and both of the heroes cringed.

He wanted a magical yoyo to swing through the streets. All he had were portals that he couldn’t even use because he needed them to get close to Inamovibi-Lady.

“I’m currently here with our favorite Ladyblogger, a good reporter for the most part… but!”

The apartment building finally came into view and he winced at the sight of a broken window. At least they knew which apartment to look into.

“Every good reporter needs their proof, don’t you think, Alya? And, god, do you ask for proof...”

“Marinette?”

“Inamovibi-Lady.”

Adrien sent a tiny wave and used his baton to vault through the window. The sound of the glass breaking was caught on the microphone, which was about as pleasant as you’d expect. Tim fought the urge to cover his ears as he started climbing a nearby drainpipe.

“Wow! I didn’t expect you to show up so soon, darling! You’re shockingly productive. Is Cheval coming?”

“Yep! He’s on his way up the wall right now.”

Tim winced. Really? He decides to speak and it’s only to sell him out?

Inamovibi-Lady laughed quietly. “C’mon, I know you’re a better partner than that, darling. Not able to work with him, huh? Too bad. I guess I can change up my order to give him more time…”

Oh. So Adrien was using their new curse against her. Nice.

“Cheval, darling, if you don’t get here in time I’m going to Master Fu’s next. He’s right where you dropped in from America the first time.”

“Wait, what did Master Fu do?” Asked Adrien, the frown evident in his voice.

Tim finally reached the window and slowly peeked his head over the sill. Adrien had moved to a spot that had Inamovibi-Lady facing away from the door, which Alya was slowly creeping towards.

The akuma giggled. “Like you don’t know. But for the rest of Paris, it’s a secret until his hearing… which I can’t get to until this one is over.”

Her microphone morphed into a yoyo and she tossed it over her shoulder at the door. Alya barely dodged it but, apparently, that wasn’t what she was aiming for. The yoyo hooked around the doorknob and with a flick of her wrist the string cut through the brass like it was butter.

“There, with that temptation gone, let’s get back to the whole ‘you literally believed everything Lila said but apparently I need to give proof’ thing, yes?”

Adrien sighed. “Sorry about this, Nette, but… I can’t let you do this.”

The akuma tipped her head to the side as they seemed to consider this before she shrugged and pulled her yoyo to her hand. “If you say so.”

The two ex-partners eyed each other warily. Adrien lengthened his baton and attempted to get a quick hit from a distance.

“Aw, scared, darling?” She teased as she ducked the blow.

He scoffed and ran at her.

Tim used the distraction to sneak through the room. He gave Alya a tiny smile and pressed a finger to his lips to tell her to stay quiet, then turned his attention to the knob and he cringed.

He grabbed a pencil off a nearby desk and started attempting to trigger the door mechanism. If worse came to worst, he could always break down the door, but he’d prefer to get Alya out without Inamovibi-Lady noticing.

He glanced back and winced.

Inamovibi-Lady had managed to hook her yoyo around Adrien’s baton, and now they were in an awkward game of tug-of-war. Their boots scuffed the wooden floors as they tried to pull the weapons out of their opponent’s grip.

The metal of the baton was, slowly but surely, crinkling. He winced and let go, sending both of them flying backward.

Which would have been fine if Adrien hadn’t gone careening into Tim and Alya.

Inamovibi-Lady hit the opposite wall and her eyes narrowed in on the fact that Tim was attempting to open the door. He gave up on subtlety entirely and kicked the door down. He grabbed Alya and started making a run for it.

Man, why did akumas have to be so one-track minded? Now that she knew that her target was escaping, Inamovibi-Lady apparently couldn’t care less about Adrien chasing after her with a glorified stick.

And Tim? Tim had discovered that it was extremely hard to throw a boomerang, run, and carry a civilian all at the same time.

He knocked over things in the Césaire apartment as he ran around (he’d pay them back if he could later), desperate to put as much distance between himself and the akuma as he could, but she didn’t seem all that affected.

And then he came to a window. He pushed the curtain to the side and looked out over the streets. They were around five floors up… Fun. If he was alone it wouldn’t be much of a problem to jump out, but with Alya…

He cringed and set her down, pushing her behind him and bringing his hands up to fight.

Okay! Plan time!

He was just going to assume that she only had those three different weapon types. She probably would have used other things by now if she had the options.

The microphone was just a microphone…

The gavel seemed to be just for judgment…

So the only weapon she had really used was her yoyo. It was also the one she had the most practice with, which wasn’t great, but at least she didn’t really have any close-up attacks…

She stumbled out of the hall, Adrien on her back as he attempted to choke her out with his baton.

Oh, good. He’d noticed, too.

Tim looked around for a close-range weapon and pulled the curtain down. He brandished the curtain rod. It wasn’t quite his bo staff, but it would have to do.

She slammed back into a wall and Adrien hissed in pain, loosening his grip just enough for her to twist free. She grabbed her partner by the arm and threw him at Tim.

The two crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and two sticks of metal that jutted out at annoying angles. The akuma looked at the two and then threw the curtain over them to add to the confused scrambling.

“Right! No more interruptions, if those two know what’s good for them!” Said the akuma, and Tim could tell from the volume that she was using her microphone again.

That would be great if Adrien would just.. fucking... get off! He elbowed him in the face and mumbled a “sorry” before starting to try and untangle himself.

“You opted to believe everyone but me without proof, but why should we let that stand? It’s unfair! So, how about you ask everyone for proof about everything from now on? Sound good?”

“No!” Said Alya and, from the sound of it, she was trying to run away.

Tim managed to pull his head out just in time to watch light envelop the girl. He shielded his eyes and looked away, using the time to grab the curtain rod again.

When he could finally look again, he found the akuma leaning over him with a hand out to help him out properly.

He narrowed his eyes in slight suspicion, looking for her weapon. He found her yoyo fastened to her waist. Okay, so it probably wasn’t some sort of ploy.

“Oh, did you get hit with some of Alya’s sentence?” She joked quietly.

He slowly took her hand. She wouldn’t hurt him too badly, she needed him to go after Joker and Harley…

But he couldn’t let that happen. As much as they deserved it, he didn’t want to chance Marinette feeling bad about it when she got deakumatized.

Inamovibi-Lady pulled him out, only for her eyes to widen as he brought his makeshift staff up to bean her over the head.

She had to fall back to avoid it and he used her momentum to tackle her, his hands grabbing at her waist until he’d managed to pull the yoyo from her.

He tossed it over at Adrien, who was just now managing to get out, and he stared at it confusedly for a second before he seemed to understand what was going on.

“Cataclysm!”

The ashes fell to the floor and the heroes breathed a sigh of relief.

Sure, they’d failed to save Alya, but at least Inamovibi-Lady’s reign of terror was over.

Tim grinned and helped the akuma to her feet. He pointed at her earring. She knew she lost, but even if she did try to fight back he figured she’d be pretty helpless without her weapon. He’d fought her in hand to hand before. He could beat her, especially if he had Adrien’s help.

Now, to get rid of the akuma...

They watched her touch her earring and start to pull a weird substance from it. After a few seconds, she’d pooled a good amount into her hand. Their mouths fell open as she molded what she had into a new yoyo.

Adrien threw his hands up in frustration. “OKAY, HOW IS THAT FAIR?”

Tim didn’t even have time to complain before the yoyo had wrapped around him and pulled him to her side.

“Gotham. The Batcave, if you can. Please?” She chirped.

Tim considered this for a few seconds. At least they had some allies over there…

Well, if they were actually in the Batcave and not on patrols. But there had to be at least one person, right?

He gave the akuma a tense smile and opened a portal underneath them.

She smiled and gave him a tiny pat on the head, then carefully pulled her yoyo off of him.

Dick looked up from the computer and his eyebrows scrunched together. “Uh… what happened to Nette?”

“Akumatized,” said Tim, giving him a glare. “You know, that thing I told you about?”

Was it Dick’s fault that he hadn’t believed him? No. Was Tim still bitter? Absolutely.

Adrien stepped through as well and the portal closed behind him.

“So we’re in Gotham,” he said with a set of sarcastic jazz hands. “Amazing. Now what? Do you have a plan that you just decided not to use in the months we were looking for him or what?”

“Actually, yes!” Said Inamovibi-Lady brightly. She pointed to Bruce, who was just pulling his cowl over his head to prepare for patrols in an hour. “I need your help, good sir!”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed slightly. “With what?”

She winked and twirled her yoyo until it was a microphone. She fiddled with it for a few seconds and then pressed a tiny button on the handle. Her voice carried through the streets in perfect English:

“Citizens of Gotham! Ignore this message! It’s not for you, I’m specifically talking to Joker right now. Put in your headphones or something.”

She hummed for a few seconds, then nodded.

“Great, now that it’s just you and me: Hi! Fuck you! You’re the absolute worst and I hope to destroy everything you’ve ever cared about! Starting with your favorite bat. I’m dropping him off of Gotham Cathedral in five hours, it’ll be great. Come meet me properly, you can even bring your girlfriend… I want to chat!”


	17. Chapter 17

She swung her gavel idly as she jumped from gargoyle to gargoyle.

Even if she didn’t have a grin stuck to her face, she’d be smiling so widely that Joker would be jealous.

What a productive night she had been having! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much go well for herself!

Lila would never hurt anyone again! Alya would be more cautious! Adrien and Tim would understand what it was like to have no one believe them! Joker and Harley were likely on their way! She was even on track to give Master Fu and Hawkmoth their just deserts!

And all she’d had to do was get a bit of a powerup and lose her morality!

Her eyes traveled down to the streets, where a crowd was slowly forming. A few of them were pointing up at her hostage.

She watched Bruce sway slightly in the wind. He was being careful not to move in the ropes. She didn’t know why. She’d secured him pretty well, the only way he’d fall was if someone broke the rope above him. Even then, they’d given Kaalki some bread. Tim would save him if he fell. And, if he missed, the bats were all waiting on lower towers to catch him.

Good. They couldn’t try to stop her if they weren’t closeby. Sure, it had taken holding Bruce off a ledge precariously to get them to do it, but at least she’d gotten all the bats distracted...

Well, that wasn’t completely true.

She found her soulmate, who was standing beside the stairwell with a frown on his face.

She giggled, leaning on her gavel.

“Cheer up! They’re about to get what they deserve!”

~

He sighed and closed his eyes.

He really didn’t know what to do.

Using a text-to-speech app to talk was difficult. Explaining everything that had happened to the bats had been hard enough, but even the idea of trying to have this kind of conversation with an app was enough to get him frustrated preemptively.

He had to try, though…

But how do you convince someone without morals that what they’re doing isn’t okay?

He pulled out his phone and took a seat on the ledge beside her. He was careful to stay out of view of the people below as he typed.

“Nette --.”

“Inamovibi-Lady.”

“-- they don’t deserve whatever ironic justice you’re about to give them. They deserve to spend their lives in jail like everyone else.”

The akuma shook her head slowly. “I wish it were that easy, Cheval, but they’re never going to face consequences. They keep getting out of going to jail by getting marked as insane and going to Arkham, then getting out of Arkham by letting psychiatrists find them sane. It’s happened a million times before, it’ll happen again.”

He sighed lightly. “You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?”

“Please, I know you’re doing this for me, but I don’t want this.”

She stepped off her gargoyle and strode over to him, leaning down until she was at eye-level. “You’re not the only reason why I have to do this. I have to think about the civilians, too. He’s a serial killer. He needs to be punished.”

Fine. Time to try the Disney approach. He didn’t know what else he could do.

He was glad he had to type to speak, now. It was difficult to look her in the eyes. But he had to. There was no way to put any inflection in his voice when he wasn’t speaking, so he needed to look completely earnest to get his point across.

“Nette, I know you’re in there. You need to fight back. What you’re doing isn’t right. You have to know that. Please, let’s just deakumatize you and go home.”

She shook her head slightly and carefully brought a hand up to cup his cheek.

“She’s in here alright, but that doesn’t mean she’s against doing this.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Are you sure about that?”

And then she pushed him.

~

She felt a twinge of… something other than anger or satisfaction as he fell. Even as she watched Barbara catch him, she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling.

It had been necessary. The moment he realized exactly what her punishment was going to be, he’d try and stop her. She couldn’t have him close enough to do so in time.

But still…

She tightened her grip on her gavel and turned away from the ledge.

Someone was in the elevator. She watched the number beside the doors slowly increase, climbing higher and higher…

Ding!

Joker and Harley stepped out.

She pointed her gavel at Harley’s hammer. “Hey, lookie! We match!”

The woman didn’t seem as amused, hefting her weapon onto her shoulder. “Aren’t you the bat’s newest kid?”

Inamovibi-Lady shrugged calmly and morphed it back into her yoyo. She’d just wanted to mess with Harley by pointing out an easy similarity, now she should at least prepare for the fight that was sure to come.

“No, that’s my friend. If he adopted me it’d be pretty problematic.”

“What do you --?” Began Joker, and then stopped and started laughing like he’d just heard the funniest joke. “I know who you are! You’re Robin’s soulmate!”

Harley’s eyes traveled to her yoyo and she joined in on the laughter. “So, that’s what this is about. Here for revenge, are you?”

“I prefer ‘justice’, but yes.” She gave a tiny, sarcastic bow. “Cliche soulmate, at your service.”

“Don’t you know that revenge is against the bat’s code? Just ask Jason Todd.”

Inamovibi-Lady didn’t know who that was, or how they were relevant, but she found she didn’t care at that exact moment. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not trying to join Batman’s little crew, don’t you think?”

“Okay. You really are new, aren’t you?” He sighed and pulled a gun from a pocket of his suit. “Since you are new, I’m only going to say this once: I’m the only one that gets to kill Batsy over there.”

She giggled and started toying with her yoyo. “Called dibs, have you?”

“They have a special bond,” said Harley with just a hint of annoyance.

Inamovibi-Lady raised her eyebrows slightly. “Sounds cute, but if you want rights to kill the bat, you’re going to have to fight me for it.”

Joker made a gesture with his hands, a ‘well, what can you do?’, and then raised his gun.

**Tw: murder**

She spun her yoyo in front of her idly and watched the bullets ricochet away.

Joker emptied his gun before he seemed to realize that none of his shots were hitting. Then he stared at it with confusion. “How is that possible?”

She giggled. “Who knows. Love it, though!”

He seemed to consider this for a second, then he grabbed Harley and practically threw her at Inamovibi-Lady. “Get her, poo!”

“Wow, great boyfriend you have,” the akuma joked. “Really seems like he loves you.”

Harley hefted her hammer and ran at her.

Oh, a sore spot?

She dodged a swing of the hammer and her eyes widened slightly as the ground around it exploded. Hm. That was a bigger problem than she’d thought it’d be…

Whatever.

“Honestly, though? You’re a smart lady, got a degree and everything, so… why the Joker?”

Harley swung again and Marinette had to do a back handspring to avoid having her head popped clean off. “We love each other.”

“Cute way of showing it, he has. He tossed you in chemicals.”

The hammer and yoyo connected, sending them both back a few steps.

“I mean, you’re a psychologist. The man’s got so many red flags he might as well be speaking in semaphore.”

“Shut up!” She yelled, slamming the ground in front of the akuma.

She went flying, skidding across the rooftop until she hit her head on the edge.

Harley walked towards her, mallet raised over her head for a finishing blow.

Inamovibi-Lady looked around wildly and her eyes locked on Bruce. This was meant to be something she did later, to distract the bats when she was killing Joker, but…

She hooked her yoyo around the rope holding up Bruce and pulled tight.

“NO!”

Bruce dropped.

Harley paused in front of Inamovibi-Lady, her mouth open wide in shock as she stared at where Bruce had been.

The akuma grabbed the hammer. “I’ll be taking this, thanks,” she chirped, before throwing Harley over the side. She watched her fall for a few seconds and sighed in relief when none of the bats went to save her, too distracted with getting their father to safety.

Harley splattered on the pavement.

She strapped the hammer to her back and turned on her heel.

She advanced on Joker slowly.

She knew his major weapons. He didn’t seem eager to try using another gun after the first attempt, so those were out of the question. Besides that, she could only see his acid flower. No cane, no cards…

He’d come wholly unprepared.

“Wow. You really didn’t think I was a threat at all, huh? Rude,” she said, twirling her yoyo idly.

“You killed him! You fucking killed Batman!”

Inamovibi-Lady rolled her eyes. “Please. The bat kids saved him.”

Joker looked slightly relieved, but it didn’t last long as she looped her lasso around him and pulled tight enough to start digging into his skin and clothes.

“Now, I wanted this to be long and painful, but I’m on a time crunch here, so… any last words?”

The man stared at her for a few seconds before breaking into laughter.

She would have frowned if she could. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting a bat to be looking at her disapprovingly, but there was no one, so…

“What’s funny?”

“You. I was going for snapping your little boyfriend, but I got you instead! That’s hilarious!”

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. He got her? Snapped her? Was her translator working right? She was perfectly fine. He’d lost.

But he was still laughing. And she couldn’t stand it. His stupid, high-pitched laugh and that wide, ever-present grin and he shouldn’t be looking like that! He was finally getting what he deserved, this was payback for all those people he’d killed and tortured! Why was he amused? That wasn’t right!

She pulled tighter and tighter, but he wouldn’t stop. His acid flower malfunctioned and spilled acid over him, his bones were cracking, his blood was slowly leaking from his wounds… but he wouldn’t stop laughing. She pulled tighter. He had to stop at some point. She’d make sure of it.

And then her yoyo sliced clean through him.

He’d stopped.

Finally.

**Tw over**

By the time they’d gotten there, she was sitting in front of one of the craters Harley’s hammer had made. She thought it was pretty cool. Maybe she could start using it...

“Nette?” Said Dick hesitantly.

She looked up and waved. “Hi! Inamovibi-Lady. But hi!”

Barbara looked like she was going to be sick as she stared at what was left of Joker. All the bats looked a little green, actually, now that she was paying attention. Whatever, they’d thank her later, when the number of deaths the city had per year went down.

She caught Adrien’s eyes and flashed a thumbs up.

To her surprise, he looked horrified. She’d thought that, even if the bats would have disapproved, he at least would have understood. It was for the greater good. They always worked towards the greater good. She’d done well…

Right?

She felt something drop on her and jumped slightly, only to realize it was just a coat.

She gave Tim a slight smile and mumbled her thanks. He only nodded and took a careful step back.

Inamovibi-Lady drew it tighter around herself. Had she always been shaking like this? Why was she even shaking? She should be happy. They’d gotten their justice.

Her gaze found their way to the yoyo in her lap. To the blood slowly dripping from the string...

She felt a weird pressure in her chest and brought a hand up to rest over her heart.

She’d killed people before, but that was different. They were always soldiers of akumas, she’d always be able to fix it at the end. But now everything she was doing was permanent, and she had murdered two actually sentient people. Terrible people who would have done the same to her if they were in her shoes, had even tried to do so, but people all the same.

God, what had she done?

Those people are gone.

Because of her.

She was only fourteen.

Why was this her responsibility in the first place?

Her grip tightened on her yoyo and she found Tim again.

“Master Fu’s house, please.”


	18. Chapter 18

Tim hugged himself. He was, in a word, shaken.

In many words, though, he was absolutely terrified of what Inamovibi-Lady had become. From dropping him and Bruce off a building to murdering Harley and Joker in gruesome ways, she was extremely amoral in how she achieved her goals. Sure, he’d known that akumas have their own moral code, but it had never really sunk in until he’d been faced with it.

And the akuma had told him that Marinette was inside there and that she wasn’t particularly against anything she was doing.

But how true was that?

It appeared that she was just now starting to process what she’d done. She was shaking a little bit, her eyes wide. He hesitated and detransformed momentarily to get his jacket and then draped it over her shoulders. It wasn’t a shock blanket, but it would have to do.

She looked at him for a second and seemed to smile a little more (it was hard to tell) before looking down at her yoyo.

He went back to standing a careful distance away, his eyes wandering to his family. Everyone seemed a mix of sickened and frightened by what had happened.

Adrien was full-on crying, curled up on the floor with his head in his knees. Fair enough, this really wasn’t his night. He’d found out his father was the supervillain he’d been fighting for years, had his best friend akumatized, had difficulty communicating with everyone, and now an akuma that he’d helped create had brutally murdered two people. A breakdown was pretty much inevitable.

Dick sat down next to him and pulled him into his side. Adrien didn’t seem to know what to do with the affection for a second before burying his face in his shoulder.

“Master Fu’s house, please,” said the akuma, bringing his attention back to her.

He hesitated slightly.

He was definitely going to be alone for this one. Even if he could break the moral barrier keeping him from taking a crying Adrien along to fight her, he doubted that he would be of much help.

But it wasn’t like he was really getting any choice in this. Her next target after the ‘Master Fu’ person was definitely going to be Hawkmoth and, though he could admit that she was stronger than normal, they definitely weren’t prepared to fight him. He had to beat her.

How, though? Sure, he at least knew that she wasn’t trying to hurt him (he’d just found out what would have happened to him if she had actually wanted him dead), but that didn’t mean much when she went to drastic measures to ensure that things went her way. He didn’t know how lenient she would be with him if she actually thought him a threat, because she obviously didn’t --. 

He felt a hand rest on his arm and pulled himself from his thoughts to send Inamovibi-Lady a smile.

“Sorry.”

She raised an eyebrow at him and crossed her arms over her chest. He tried not to think about the bloody handprint now on his arm as he glanced at his family. Still no help. Great. How dare they be in shock?

He gave Inamovibi-Lady an awkward smile and opened a portal underneath them.

When they dropped into the tiny shop it took everything in Tim not to slam his head against a wall. Master Fu was just sitting at the table, drinking tea and eating sandwiches. He’d had a five-hour warning, why the fuck hadn’t he even tried to run?

She twirled her yoyo, her black eyes narrowed to slits.

“Hello, Marinette.”

“Inamovibi-Lady,” she corrected. Her head tipped to the side. “You’re not going to run away?”

“If you’d like to air your grievances, I would love to hear them.”

The akuma, if possible, looked even more suspicious. “Really?”

Master Fu shrugged and gave a tiny wave of his hand before leaning back. “Mhmm. Go on.”

“I…” Inamovibi-Lady began, then stopped. There was a few times where she opened and closed her mouth, unsure what to do in this type of situation, and then she shrugged and brought her microphone to her hand. “Right, um… citizens of Paris! I’m back, and I’m here to do hearing number five! Well, four for you guys, but five total! With us today is Wang Fu!”

The old man caught Tim’s gaze and then flicked his eyes to the side quickly. Was Tim sure it had meant something? Yes. Did he have any clue what this guy was trying to say? No.

“Now, what he did was particularly messed up. Imagine, you’re a kid on their way to school, and you see this old man about to get run over. You help them. And, because of this, this random guy decides to give you the responsibility of making sure the entire city of Paris never falls to a superterrorist!”

“You must understand --.”

“Shut up. I’m not done.”

Tim rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and took a few short steps back so he could hopefully stay out of this conversation.

He also took the chance to detransform out of Inamovibi-Lady’s view. He didn’t know if Hawkmoth could hear and see everything that the akuma could, but he wasn’t going to test it. Kaalki floated over to Master Fu and stole the bread off of his sandwiches before settling herself on Tim’s shoulder to eat.

“Let’s skip over the fact that you asked two thirteen-year-olds to protect an entire city for now, because let’s talk about the fact that I didn’t have a choice!”

“You could have refused at any point.”

“Like hell I could! The city was under attack and it was obvious no normal person could do it, and then after that I was too popular to just disappear! At least the Americans recruiting kids ask them if they want to do it before they set them up as vigilantes!”

Tim transformed again and crossed his arms over his chest as he considered what to do.

He kind of wanted to let her attack the old man -- he knew first hand exactly how stressful being a vigilante is, and the idea of being thrown into it without warning was enough to make him wince -- but, at the same time, letting her do that would be kind of messed up of him.

Also, he had no plan at all, which was kind of a problem if he was going to be trying to stop her.

“So, now for your judgment.”

Shit!

“How about…” She tapped her finger on her chin as if in thought for a moment before smiling widely. “I take those miraculi off your hands. You’re clearly too old to make proper decisions about who to give them to, and I have someone better in mind.”

He needs a plan! And now!

Ah. There’s one. A bad one. But one nonetheless.

He launched himself at the akuma from behind and they both cursed as she stumbled and threw them off-balance.

But, instead of just falling to the ground for a wrestling match, her back hit something invisible and they screamed in a mix of panic and confusion as the illusion broke to reveal that they were in the turtle miraculous’s shield. They had bigger problems, though, as they rolled through the room.

They came to a stop when they hit the wall, which was unfortunate considering they were at the top. They fell the few feet to the bottom of the hamster ball and groaned.

Tim peeled his face out of her stomach and slowly pushed himself up and looked around.

Master Fu was wearing both the turtle and fox miraculi.

Well, now he knew what he’d been trying to tell him earlier: to move so he wouldn’t be caught in the hamster ball, too. Wow. Wish there was a hand motion for that or something, because Tim was not eager to be back inside, and especially not with a particularly angry akuma.

Actually, now that he was thinking about it, she was taking this remarkably well (for an akuma). Inamovibi-Lady laid back in the hamster ball and started doing tricks with her yoyo.

“You can’t keep this up forever, Fu. You have to sleep. I don’t.”

Oh. That made sense. Unfortunately.

“Besides, since Hawkmoth knows you have miraculi here, I’m expecting him to come by at some point. Gonna protect yourself and the miraculous box or keep me in here?”

Can she please stop making sense? Just for a few minutes?

He sighed and covered his ears. He needed to concentrate. He needed a plan. He had quite a bit of time, he assumed, but the faster he fixed this the faster everything could work out.

Well, not work out, they were long past that point, but at least it would be over.

His eyes found their way to her yoyo. Of course they did, it was moving around wildly, and the human eye is attracted to movement. But…

Tim shrugged to himself. A terrible plan came to him, it was really too bad they were desperate. He grabbed the akuma’s arm and opened a portal underneath them.

And they were falling.

Inamovibi-Lady screamed obscenities as they plummeted towards earth, the Eiffel Tower whizzing past them at lightning speed. He pulled her actual yoyo from his belt just in case he was wrong in how he thought this would play out...

She pulled him to her side and he breathed a sigh of relief as she threw her yoyo. She hooked it around a beam and their fall came to a jerking stop that he was not ready for. He swore he left his stomach about ten meters up.

But no time to think about that! He wrapped his arms around her as well.

“That went to plan,” he said.

“Really? Your plan was to almost die, then?” He couldn’t tell for sure, but he knew she was rolling her eyes. “You’re literally so stupid. You and Chat should have a stupid-off.”

He grinned.

She looked around for a safe place for them to land. “You might need to climb the string to get up. How good are you at that?”

He gave a tiny shrug and made a move to push himself up, only to pull the earring from her ear.

Relief flooded through him as purple and black engulfed her and her weapon. Done. Finally.

He only came to realize his mistake the moment her yoyo started to disappear.

And they were falling again.

And she was barely conscious.

And he had no idea how yoyos worked as weapons or grappling hooks are you kidding me?

He looked at the one in his free hand and shrugged mentally. He either doesn’t try and they both end up dead, tries and fails and they both end up dead, or tries and actually succeeds. He hooked his arm and legs around her as tightly as he could and prayed that it was even slightly like his grappling hook as he threw it.

They swung to safety. Kind of. He caught them pretty close to the ground, and the yoyo didn’t really hook around the beam all that well, so it mostly just slowed their fall, but outside of a few bruises they’d probably be fine when they took off their suits.

He groaned quietly and crushed the earring in his hand and caught the akuma.

And then he let himself lay down beside a confused and groggy Marinette.

Tim watched the sun start to rise and sighed, bringing an arm up to cover his eyes.

It had been a long night, but it was over now.


	19. Chapter 19

He could hear her shifting around beside him. Then, she squeaked. He felt her hands cup his cheeks and slowly moved his arm away from his eyes. Her shoulders relaxed a little when she saw him move, but she was clearly still tense. “What happened? What’s all this blood from? Are you okay? Do you need the hospital--?”  
“It’s not mine, don’t worry,” he said, bringing his hands up to rest over hers.

“You would absolutely lie about that.” She took a quick look around. “No one’s here. Detransform. I’m checking.”

He sighed lightly. Right. No one will ever believe anything he said aloud ever again. He’d have to try harder to not speak.

He detransformed and allowed her to check him over. He was more bruised than he’d thought he was going to be, but he was still right: he wasn’t bleeding.

This only seemed to marginally make her feel better. He could tell she wanted to ask him something, could guess what she wanted to know, but she ended up just offering him a hand up.

Tim gave a small smile and pulled himself to his feet.

She looked at the slowly rising sun and rubbed her eyes.

“How do you feel about skipping school for the day?”

~

“I did what?!” She whispered.

She barely pulled her face out of her hands to look around the Batcave.

She buried her face in her hands again when it became clear that she wasn’t going to get an answer.

This was all great. Perfect, even.

Tim and Adrien were going to be mute for the rest of their lives, Lila was likely going to be interrogated and then thrown in jail, Alya would find herself unable to trust anyone. She’d made three people’s lives a million times harder, and she wouldn’t be surprised if Lila ended up dead.

Speaking of death: she’d killed two people! Cross that one off the bucket list. Sure, they were absolutely terrible and she’d wanted them dead, but that didn’t mean that they’d had to die like that. She’d wanted to use Cataclysm to get it done as quickly and painlessly as possible. What she’d done was just cruel.

And the cherry on top was that the entirety of Paris knew that she was Ladybug and that Master Fu had the miraculous box.

The past few hours had been damage control. Bruce had sent in a private jet to take her parents to Reims, France (it was relatively close by, but far enough that it was out of Hawkmoth’s control). Adrien had gone to the school nurse and they’d used the fox miraculous to have a fake Nathalie pick him up; they’d have him for a few hours before anyone noticed something was amiss. Finally, they’d brought Master Fu and the miraculous box to America with them so they could all think about their next move without fearing Hawkmoth would pop up out of nowhere to fight them.

She’d liked damage control. Not only was it a good way of keeping herself distracted, but she’d also been semi-blissfully unaware of what she’d done as an akuma.

She supposed that there was nothing really stopping her from avoiding her problems again… outside of recognizing that avoiding her problems was exactly what had gotten her to blow up in the first place.

Oh well.

Marinette managed to peel her hands away from herself and leaned into Barbara.

“Right. What can we fix?”

Master Fu hesitated. “I can transfer my guardianship onto someone else --.”

“Not it,” said Marinette instantly. Adrien held up an X with his arms to say he, too, didn’t want it.

The bats eyed each other. They were all more than a little cautious of people with powers -- or, as they called them, metas -- and, despite having gotten closer to Marinette and Adrien, they were still a bit wary of the idea.

Alfred cleared his throat and everyone looked at him.

“I do hope I’m not overstepping, but I’d be willing to take on the extra responsibility.”

~

Tim swung his legs boredly as they waited.

They’d all agreed that Adrien should be the one to try and get Hawkmoth’s pin off of him. Gabriel was his father, after all, and he still didn’t know that Adrien was Chat Noir. Besides, they doubted that he wore the pin to sleep. It had to be set down at some point, right?

Also, it would be pretty odd for Marinette and Tim to just walk in and ask about his accessories.

So, they’d told him to go inside and grab it while he was asleep. No confrontation allowed.

Of course, everyone knew that Adrien was going to confront his dad. They weren’t stupid.

And they probably would have let him if they didn’t fear that he’d get talked out of it. After all, Gabriel must need the wish for something, and he was Adrien’s father. He could probably spin what he was doing as for the best.

Marinette and Tim had both decided to give him five minutes to chew Gabriel out before they interfered.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses.

Marinette shoved her Big Gulp cup of espresso into his hands without looking at him.

He wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t met his eyes since she’d found out what she’d done when akumatized. Hadn’t talked to him outside of necessity. He’d tried to tell her that he didn’t blame her, had even typed it out to make sure it wouldn’t be disbelieved automatically due to the curse, but he knew that she still blamed herself.

He took a few sips before checking his phone for the time.

He gave her a tiny poke on the arm to tell her it was time and she nodded grimly. She wrapped an arm around him and swung them in through one of Adrien’s windows.

Marinette let go and they slipped through the halls silently. It was completely dark in the Agreste house, and they had to squint to see, but neither of them were willing to use a light.

He slipped his hand into hers and let her lead him through the halls.

They were walking down the stairs in the entrance hall when they heard voices.

And, to their horror, they were getting closer.

She tugged harder on his hand and they hopped a railing. They ducked behind a statue and he fought the urge to hiss as the light was turned on.

“Come. You say you want to know why I have to do this, you can know,” said Gabriel as he ushered his son through the house.

They followed them from room to room, careful never to be in a room until they were sure that the Agrestes weren’t in there anymore.

And then they took too long in a room.

Tim and Marinette met each other’s eyes and gave each other confused looks before she cracked the door open.

And her mouth dropped.

He peeked through as well and watched as a hatch in the floor closed.

They waited a few seconds before stepping inside and going to where Gabriel and Adrien must have escaped through. They walked over to where the hatch was and Marinette ran her hand over the floor with a tiny frown.

“It’s seamless.” She punched the floor and then cursed and shook her hand out. “Nope, that’s not going to break, it’s just stone. Can you hack it?”

Tim nodded slightly and then pointed at his wrist to say it would take some time.

She winced. “Don’t have a lot of that. Hurry, please?”

He nodded and swiped Gabriel’s computer from his desk.

And then he got to work.


	20. Chapter 20

He closed the computer with a snap, startling Marinette out of her intense yoyo-ing session.

They walked to the hole in the floor and peered down. It was pitch black, save for the little beam of light that they’d created when they’d opened it. He was tempted to drop the computer down to see just how far they were about to fall, but he decided against it. They didn’t need to give Hawkmoth any more warning than they already had.

Marinette gave him a tiny grin. “Ever broken your legs before?”

He shrugged. “A few times.”

“I don’t know if that means you’ve never done it before or you’ve done it a million times, but both concern me,” she mumbled, more to herself than to him. She took a deep breath.

She dropped down.

He waited a few seconds for her to roll out of the way and then slipped through.

Tim hit the floor and fought the urge to curse as his legs crunched underneath him. He thanked Kaalki that his suit kept him in reasonable shape and carefully pushed himself up.

The hatch shut behind them, plunging them into pure darkness. It was automated, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t put him more on edge.

Bruce always said that darkness was their friend, and there were times where Tim agreed, but this darkness felt distinctly hostile. It was hiding something other than them.

He could feel Marinette next to him, her hand resting on his forearm to keep track of where he was. He reached the other hand out and started searching around. He touched a railing. Alright, so they were on some sort of walkway...

“What are the chances that they left in the ten minutes it took to get down here?” She whispered jokingly, her nails digging into his suit. Her grip wasn’t strong enough for her to cut through, but it was enough for him to have to fight back the urge to pull away.

And then a light flicked on across the room. He blinked a few times to adjust.

His mouth fell open.

Because, at the end of a walkway, was a glass coffin. The woman inside was unmistakably Adrien’s mother, the resemblance was uncanny even from afar. She was completely motionless and far, far too pale.

But then something pulled his attention away from it. A flicker of green light, a soft shuffling sound.

Tim cursed and fumbled for his phone. He clicked it on and started pointing the screen around to try and see anything.

“They’ll see us!” Whispered Marinette, bringing her hand up to try and block the light.

And then she faltered.

Because the cat was in front of them, his green eyes casting a dim light over his face.

“Looks like they already have.”

They got into fighting positions instantly. After all, the fact that their favorite cat had decided to transform didn’t bode well for them...

He sighed and dropped his baton with a loud clatter, then perched himself on the railing by them. He pulled his phone out of seemingly nowhere and started typing: “I told dad to let me try and reason with you guys first. He’s not here. You can push me off the side of this if we try anything, promise. I just want to talk.”

Marinette mumbled something and a lantern appeared in her hand. She set it down and then motioned for him to go ahead.

Tim wished that he could see more of her face behind her mask because he could not get a reading on her right now. He settled for just picking up the baton.

“Mari, please, just hand over the earrings.”

“I know that you miss your mom... but we can’t bring her back.”

“But it’s not just about mom!”

She raised her eyebrows skeptically.

He sighed and pulled out his phone. After a bit of typing, a robotic voice explained, “I want to make it so mom never died. It’ll be great. No Hawkmoth, no Chat Noir or Ladybug or Cheval. We’d just be normal people again.”

“Chaton…”

“Heck, we can swap mom’s death and make it so Joker died that day instead.” He looked between the both of them, his eyes wide and pleading. “Don’t you want that? We’re just kids, remember? This shouldn’t have happened to any of us. So, let’s fix it.”

Marinette hesitated, messing with her yoyo. He saw her eye the phones in their hands with a guilty expression.

Tim also hesitated, but he wasn’t particularly sure why. Yes, he happened to think it a terrible idea, but this was something else. There was something terribly wrong here, he just didn’t know what.

He typed out a question to buy time: “How do we know your dad won’t betray us?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Cheval. I’ll do it myself, he doesn’t have to be involved.”

She nodded slowly and took off her earrings.

“Thanks, Mari, this means a lot to me.”

Oh. Oh fuck.

Tim covered Marinette’s hand and pushed her arm down. “Hey, Adrien, say my name.”

The cat’s eyebrows knit together.

“What’s my civilian name? Your dad isn’t here, go ahead and say it.”

Tim watched him frown and nodded to himself, extending the baton and pointing it at him.

“Nette, put back on your earrings. I don’t know for sure who this is, but it sure as hell isn’t Adrien.”

She seemed a little confused, but she did put her earrings on and mumble to transform.

They were given a confused frown for a few moments before his face contorted into an ugly sneer. “What gave me away?”

“None of her friends call her ‘Mari’, and you refused to use my name.”

He considered this for a moment. “Interesting. Oh well.”

And then the akuma winked at them and fell back. They ran to the railing, hands out to catch him, only to find he had disappeared. They gave each other wary glances before peering over the side, searching the abyss for him…

And then the lantern between them was snuffed out.

The heroes were plunged into darkness again, save for the dim glow of the cat’s eyes as it peered up at them from below.

~

She hated to admit it, but the idea of giving Hawkmoth her miraculous had been tempting. If he was going to go back and change everything, wouldn’t that just make everything better? Adrien would get his family back, Tim would have never been tortured, all the damage she’d done as an akuma would be completely reverted…

And then Tim had spoken up.

And she had been reminded of one fact: if all those horrible events hadn’t happened, she would have never met him, would never have made friends with Adrien or the bats...

So, sucky as her life was, she was determined to keep the only parts of it that had actually gone well for her.

She and Tim pressed their backs to each other’s instantly, their weapons out as they searched the dark. The only light was from the akuma’s eyes (which they hoped to not get close enough to use as a proper light) and the one beaming down on Emilie Agreste. They could, theoretically, use Tim’s portals for light, but they would probably need those later to get out.

No, the akuma’s apparent night vision was definitely an advantage.

“We need to get towards Adrien’s mom to see,” she murmured. “Slowly, though, don’t want him to catch on.”

Tim didn’t quite respond -- couldn’t, she reminded herself -- but he did take a tiny step in that direction. She hoped that meant he’d heard and understood as she followed after him.

Great, they had a plan in place for the future. Unfortunately, they were in the present. And the present meant pure darkness outside of a pair of creepy eyes that the akuma, unfortunately, had enough sense to keep closed most of the time.

“Where’s the akuma?” She tried. “Your ring? Your bell? Your belt-y thingy?”

The akuma chuckled lowly from her right and she fought the urge to snap her head towards the sound. She had a reading on where he was, at least.

“Where’s Adrien? Please tell me that you didn’t kill your son,” she said.

“I would never!”

She raised her eyebrows slightly. “You’ve been trying to kill us for over a year.”

“Well, I didn’t know it was him,” the akuma defended himself, and she suppressed a cringe as she realized that he was definitely getting closer…

“I’m just saying that it’s not that far-fetched for you.”

“He’s fine. I just tied him up. He’ll see reason soon. Cataclysm.”

Fuck!

She tossed her yoyo in a blind panic at where his voice had last come from, only to hear it knock against the wall uselessly.

She fought to keep her voice level as she spoke next: “And the father of the year award goes to Gabriel Agreste!” She taunted.

But, it seemed that the akuma had caught on to what she was doing because it didn’t try and speak again. Damn it.

She glanced backward at where the light was and she cringed. Closer, but still so far away...

She brought her gaze back in front of her and had to fight the urge to scream at the pair of lamp-like green eyes a few meters in front of her.

She gasped and pressed back against Tim to tell him to move, because the akuma was definitely advancing on them, only for the akuma to touch the panel of flooring beneath her.

The floor crumbled at her feet and she screamed as she began to fall. She tossed her yoyo and hooked it around where she knew the railing to be and breathed a sigh of relief when she stopped.

But this was short-lived because the akuma’s eyes had shut again.

Tim grunted and there was a dull thud as he hit the walkway.

She pulled herself up as fast as she could and listened in for the gasps of pain and the sound of blows.

And then she hooked her arms around the neck of the person on top (it couldn’t be Tim, the person below didn’t have glowing eyes) and pulled back.

She felt hands literally claw at her arms and pain raced through her as her skin was ripped to shreds, but it was fine. She just needed to make him pass out, then they would be fine --.

“Cata --,” began the cat.

But he was cut off. Because a baton had been extended right into his open mouth.

This was great for Marinette, because she wasn’t immediately dusted.

This was also bad for Marinette, because the akuma had stumbled back. And now they were falling through the giant hole in the walkway.

She really could just not get a break from the falling.

The two screamed as she struggled to get a good angle to throw her yoyo and hold onto the akuma at the same time.

A blue portal opened underneath the two and suddenly they were falling towards the walkway. This would still hurt, but…

She flipped the two of them in the air and drove her knee into the akuma’s back as they slammed into the metal.

She tried not to think of the way the akuma’s spine snapped underneath her. At least she didn’t have to worry about fighting anymore. Besides, she had an akuma to find.

She grabbed the belt first and tugged it off, then sliced it in half with her yoyo. No purple light. No akuma.

Then she tried the ring. She crushed it in her hand. Nothing.

Then she grabbed his bell and slammed it against the floor to break it. Purple. Thank god.

She caught the akuma and looked around.

“Cheval, light,” she said. She didn’t wait for a response as they ran to the beam of light. She allowed herself to relax slightly when they got there. They’d have a few second break as the akuma left his system to breathe.

Her eyes traveled down to her scratched up and bloody arms, only to catch on the tiny pin in her hand...

Her mouth dropped open.

No. Way.

“Cheval. Cheval.” She turned to look at him and she gave him a brilliant smile as she held up her prize for him to see. “We won!”

“We…?” He finally took it in and a smile began to break across his bruised and slightly bloody face. “We won,” he breathed.

“We won! Oh my god, I could kiss you right now!”

He nodded eagerly.

She giggled and hooked her arm around his neck despite the fact that it was throbbing painfully and bleeding, pulling him down for a kiss. He responded by wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer.

Gabriel groaned and started to push himself up, only to get beaned by a yoyo and a baton at the same time.

She broke away a few seconds later and sent Tim a smile before turning to where she knew Gabriel to be.

Her smile twisted into something a little more bitter, more sinister. She twirled her yoyo lazily.

“Now, you said Adrien was tied up somewhere. Mind telling me where?”


	21. Chapter 21

Mme. Bustier gave a sigh when the three dropped their documents on the desk in unison, but this was nothing compared to the shock that came with Marinette’s words:

“We’re transferring.”

“But… but you’ve only been students here for two days!” She said, flipping through the papers with wide eyes. “And you didn’t even come for the second!”

Marinette gave a tiny shrug and glanced at Tim, who waved a stack of papers.

“You can try and keep us, if you’d like, but we have record of over a year’s worth of bullying complaints where no action was taken. Of course, you can still contest us if you’d like to deal with Mr. Wayne and Mr. Agreste’s lawyers…”

The woman’s kind face drained of color.

“I’ll… I’ll sign this right away. I hope you enjoy your time at…” She looked at the papers. “Gotham Academy.”

Marinette sent her friends grins.

“I think we will. Thank you.”

~

The superheroes had never felt more anxious in their lives. Their food remained untouched in front of them... outside of Kagami, who was slowly eating her beignet fries.

Or, at least, she had been. Now she was looking at them all with wide eyes.

“Let me get this straight…” Said Kagami. “You --.” She pointed her fry at Adrien. “-- are Chat Noir. And you never told me to keep me safe, despite having no problem with giving me a miraculous on occasion.”

Adrien pursed his lips and looked at Marinette imploringly. She didn’t seem to be enjoying being the only one to speak. Her hand gripped Tim’s arm so tightly that he swore she was going to draw blood.

Damn, Tim could have so easily been left out of this. He didn’t know Kagami outside of what Adrien had said about his soulmate, he’d had every excuse to not come. But then Marinette had given him puppy-dog eyes and he was weak, okay?

Marinette coughed uncomfortably. “To be fair, Adrien was the one who didn’t want to tell you.”

Adrien choked. He glared daggers at his partner, only to stop and give his girlfriend the world’s most innocent smile. He carefully brought his hands up and made a heart with his fingers.

Kagami didn’t seem amused, taking a bite of the fry and turning back to Marinette slowly.

The girl did not seem to like this development if the tightening of her grip on his arm was any indication.

“Anyway, because his dad is Hawkmoth, we’re relocating him. We have to tell the public who Hawkmoth was, because Gabriel was too important to just have him disappear, and we don’t want him to be attacked.”

Kagami took a sip of Adrien’s drink. The model huffed a little but let her have it.

“And you’re telling me in case I want to go with him?”

“Yep. We don’t even have to tell your mom where you’re going. I can go in as Ladybug and tell her I’m relocating you for safety reasons and we can take you.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then gave a shrug. “Sure. Sounds good. Where to?”

The heroes breathed for the first time that night.

~

The press. God, she hated the press. And she hated it even more now that they were screaming ‘Marinette’ instead of ‘Ladybug’.

But she had to do this.

Marinette fought the urge to mess with her yoyo as she stepped to the podium with Adrien at her side.

He still couldn’t speak but she’d still wanted him to come onstage with her.

She smiled faintly. “Hello, Paris, we have come to make some announcements.”

“First of all, Hawkmoth has been defeated.” She paused for the cheering and applause. “The authorities have given me clearance to share this with you: his civilian identity was Gabriel Agreste.”

The gasps were soon replaced by murmuring and she had to drum her finger on the microphone a few times to get their attention back.

“That being said, please do not attack Adrien Agreste. I did extensive research and observation, and I found that he did not know and was not involved in any way. However, just to be safe, I have decided to take him out of France. During my time in America, I found a suitable person to look after him.”

“Secondly…” She took a deep breath and looked at Adrien, who gave her an encouraging smile. “... we are resigning as protectors of Paris.”

The silence that followed was deafening. She hugged herself.

“Hawkmoth has been defeated, we are no longer needed here… and it is no longer safe for my family, as the world knows my identity. We will also be relocating to America, but I implore you to respect our privacy.”

“As for Chat, he wishes to remain anonymous so he can continue hero work where he is needed. I hope you can respect that, too.”

“You won’t be left unprotected, of course. The Peacock miraculous is still lost and, though we doubt it is here, Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Queen Bee have all elected to remain in Paris in case it shows up.”

She swallowed thickly and looked out over the sea of people.

“Thank you.”

~

He flipped through a book on ASL, spinning in his swivel chair absently as he read.

Gotham was quiet at the moment, anyway. The most interesting thing he’d seen on the cameras all night had been Dick accepting a plate of cookies from a stranger.

His phone beeped to indicate his shift was almost over.

On cue, Marinette came in with two cups of coffee.

He smiled faintly as she took her seat, then she pushed her swivel chair over until it knocked against his a tiny bit. She read over his shoulder, sipping at her drink and occasionally bringing his to his lips so he could continue to hold the book for them.

He tugged at the collar of his turtleneck with an annoyed sigh. Honestly, he wished they’d come up with a different cover story for why Tim could no longer speak because wearing sweaters all the time was quickly getting annoying. ‘Rich kid had taken a blow to his windpipe and could no longer speak’ wasn’t all that unlikely in Gotham, it was hard to beat, so now he had to wear turtlenecks all the time or spend time in the morning putting a fake scar over his neck.

(And, well, Tim had never been one to put much effort into his appearance when he could be doing something more productive.)

Thankfully, no one else had needed a cover. They were a bunch of French kids, no one would be surprised to hear that they had opted not to learn two languages at once. It would have been hard to come up with similar yet different accidents for all of them, and definitely a little suspicious.

Marinette pulled his hand away from his collar and pressed a kiss to it before lacing her fingers with his. “I think you look cute.”

He smiled.

His phone beeped and he quickly fumbled to silence it, because he’d barely done anything that night and he didn’t want to have to stop already but, from the way she set her jaw, he knew that she wasn’t going to let him do that.

He set the book on his lap and signed: “Can I at least stay with you?”

Marinette blushed and nodded. He smiled at the tiny victory.

She pressed a hand to her comm. “Right, I’m here, now. Ryuuko, Chaton, report.”

“We found some really good hotdogs on eighth,” said Kagami.

“That’s…” She laughed. “Good for you. Bring me one in the morning.”

“I’m glad you’re getting some sort of nutrition, but get back to work,” said Bruce.

Kagami and Adrien groaned and she could hear them pick up speed.

“Batman, report.”

“No new information on the Two-Face situation.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course. Nightwing, Batgirl, report.”

“A civilian gave us cookies,” said Dick brightly.

“Are they poisoned?”

“We’ll find out soon,” said Barbara with a tiny sigh. “Nightwing already ate one.”

“Nightwing!”

Dick murmured something that the comms couldn’t catch, likely some version of ‘traitor!’, and then attempted to defend himself: “The lady gave them to me directly! It would have been rude not to eat one!”

She rolled her eyes. “Great. Take the cookies to Alfred to inspect and then take Nightwing to medbay just in case.”

“Gotcha.”

Tim smiled, watching her flip through their views to make sure they were all safe.

He had never really intended the man-in-the-chair thing to become his permanent form of vigilantism, had always thought he would go back to being Robin at some point, but he was glad that he hadn’t.

After all, it was less stressful and unlikely to get them hurt.

And he knew that Marinette liked the new job, too, if the tiny computer over his heart was any indication.

He felt her rest her head on his shoulder again, apparently appeased by what she had seen, and he wrapped his arm around her.

They listened to a police scanner and relaxed, together.


End file.
